A Word to the Resourceful - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/word.html <comment><USER2> Applies to employees as well. One of the better things about Google is that with _most_ engineers, you can raise some concern or some alternative way of doing things, and they'll just get it, understand all the implications, and be able to implement it with no further direction. (The ones that can't are pretty infuriating to work with, because it takes you longer to hand-hold than it would to just do it yourself.) I had an intern last fall where I could just give him the name of a product or technology to look into, or a contact e-mail for the team in charge, and he'd go look into it and come up with a working implementation. He's just been given an offer, so with any luck he'll be a coworker next year.

The thing is - I'm not certain this is entirely a property of the person involved. Yes, there are certain skills that make it easier to find information on your own. But this is also a function of the problem domain and how well you know it. If you give me a credit card and a problem statement, chances are that I can come up with a working webapp that solves the problem. But if you give me the name of a VC and tell me to go raise money - where do I start? How do I approach him? What will burn bridges and what won't?

So my question to PG and any other resourceful folks out there is: how do you approach a problem domain in which you know _nothing_ , and manage to gain enough of a map of the territory so that you listen to someone's one-word suggestions and instantly grasp the implications?

<comment><USER3> Is it cheating to suggest not knowing nothing about problem domains likely to be of interest to you, and or learning generalizable techniques for learning quickly?

For example, hypothetically, if one has a weakness regarding chasing down money and one knows their career path is likely to involve raising money, then one could get a fairly rapid education in the subject for the price of a few cups of strategically ordered coffee. Don't know the character of a VC? Thirty seconds of Googleage should give you the names of five compulsively chatty people willing to give you their take.

I can sort of see why, if one were busy, one would quickly burn out on explaining How To Email People A Question to folks who did not immediately see that in the solution set when they had a plan of action which required a bit of discoverable organic knowledge.

<comment><USER4> That doesn't mean you'll know the nuances of the situation if you've not done VC raising before. Nuances and confidence come from previous successful experiences. To bring this back to the article - of course a VC would prefer someone who has experience, and who of course will be easier to talk to then. It looks to be more closely aligned with if people know how to execute or how much experience they have with doing so, taking and processing information. Personally, I'm not good processing information and acting on it quickly - some of it, sure, but it takes time for certain types of information to sit. Sometimes I'm sure I overthink what needs to be done, instead of just initiating and playing off of what happens.

<comment><USER5> "Nuances and confidence come from previous successful experiences"

And to add to that what one person is able to pull off given their skills is not always possible by another person even if they have been told what to do or how to do it.

Seat of the pants feel involves knowing how to react and adapt when the situation changes ever so slightly (a nuance). It's impossible to prepare someone for every possibility that might come up. That's something that comes, as you said, from "from previous successful experiences".

The best advice I can give is to learn concepts as opposed to a specifics and to understand exactly why something (say in a negotiation) should be handled a certain way. It's like the difference between learning what streets to turn on in NYC and learning the way the streets and avenues run so you can arrive at your destination even if you miss a turn.

Think of yourself as an actor playing a role.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A very good mentor of mine once put it succinctly: when thinking about a problem, he said, "don't start with the barriers." Don't frame the thought process as "Here are all the reasons why not; now I need to figure out why." Instead, start from a place of "Absent all barriers or obstacles, here's what I would like to accomplish." There will be plenty of time to address obstacles, but it's best to be energized by them when you get there. If not, you'll see every obstacle as a crushing defeat.

If this sounds new-agey, well, perhaps it is. It's a mindset thing. But mindsets can be extremely critical. There's a huge difference between someone who sets out to succeed and prepares for failure, and someone who sets out to avoid failure and hopes for success. The former will exhaust every option to circumvent the obstacles; the latter will almost look at the obstacles as vindication of a deep-seated suspicion that he's wrong.

<comment><USER7> _> mindsets can be extremely critical._

I would go so far as to say that they are the only thing that matters.

You can look at a problem from one mindset and see that it's going to take you 5 days or 5 weeks. Change your mindset and you might see that it's going to take you 5 minutes.

<comment><USER8> "Perspective is worth 80 IQ points." -- Alan Kay

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> @pg Coming from an outsider looking in, I wonder how much of the issues is with you and other YC mentors. I know you have an incredible amount of knowledge but how you impress that information on people is very crucial. I wonder if the process of sharing your knowledge with people needs some refining.

Watching you do office hours and other interactions, you often make the situation uncomfortable to people who are already unsure of whats next. When you ask them a question, you cut them off as they are trying to explain what they see, only to try and answer the question for them. This has been feedback from many who have experienced the YC process.

There are people like me who have built a company and held true to our vision. We make money and we know how to run our business. We have applied to incubators not to have someone tell us what to do, rather to get advice from people who have experience similar challenges and the apply them to our structure. Granted there are groups coming through YC that don't have that experience and those people need some direction. But for both sets of groups, they want you to actually listen to them. When you bring them in for their hour each week, listen to them. The wall is not that they cannot communicate or motivated to take down leads. They are put out because every time they try to communicate they feel the door is slammed in their face as if their thought or idea doesn't matter.

In a recent blog post I wrote "When people feel comfortable, essential and free to be individually themselves, a person can become a solar flare of focused energy that fuels the world we call business." So make them feel like they are not only essential to their company but that you actually care enough to listen and hear them. People going on rants are an altogether different issue, but sometimes people need to just talk out loud to work their head around an idea. As a matter of fact, you are one of those people! But you have to give people the sense that their voice is relevant in the direction they are taking and not driven. Give people time to understand why your suggestions should be heavily considered, so they can figure it out for themselves.

Again, this is from the outside but maybe it is a place to start.

<comment><USER10> At first I did worry that the problem was on my end. That is always one's initial assumption when people don't seem to understand. Maybe I wasn't clear enough, you think, and you try again to to explain it a different way.

The reason it seems unlikely that the problem is on our end is the correlation between being difficult to talk to and failure in the outside world. If the problem was on our end, we would experience difficulty talking to both successful and unsuccessful startups.

Incidentally, if all you've seen is "office hours" on stage at a conference, you don't really know what office hours are like. Office hours onstage at an event are about 1/4 as long as real office hours, and with people I've never met before. So of course they are all over the place. Office hours at events are more like YC interviews than YC office hours.

<comment><USER9> But do you not see the flaw in that logic? "We are not the problem so we are not going to try something else". What advice would give if one of your groups said that? Paul everything I have studied about you and YC over the last 5 years tells me your an incredible person but you are stubborn and you know it. You love experiments, the next office hours simply try this approach with one of the groups. Ask them questions and then just sit back and listen. I know it is hard because you are an excitable guy but try it. They look at you as an authority figure, this larger than life person who just made there dreams come true. That holds so much power, I wonder if you realize it? Ease that stress by leveling the playing field. One or two meetings like this, where they feel you are actually listening, and they will be right back to your level and its business as usual. I bet you dinner at your favorite spot that if you truly give this a chance, it will work.

I understand the difference and don't pretend to know the daily goings on at YC, am just putting an alternate perspective on the table for consideration. Tonight when you reflect on this conversation, I think an idea will come to you. I am sure this is something that bothers you very much, because you are obsessed with solving tough problems. I think people also forget that you are human and have feelings and your not always on the top of your game. When people are overcome with a tough process they shut off. As you stated, that doesn't mean they don't know how or that they are not capable. They just don't know how to get back on the right track. These situations don't need force they need delicate leadership. If they don't respond from there, then you have done all you can and that is all anyone could ask for.

I even up voted you because I know you have taken time to have this conversation. I most likely will never get into YC because I am a single founder, therefore I fear no recourse. When the terms are level, inspiring conversation and progress can be made. I appreciate that you have listened to me and considered my thoughts, as someone trying to reach a goal, that means very much!

Think about this conversation and then what I just said, the answer is right there staring at you my friend.

<comment><USER11> I don't think pg is saying his communication is flawless, he's saying that the good teams could get past whatever those flaws are and the bad teams couldn't. The same would likely apply to another investor/mentor's differently-flawed communication style.

That of course is no reason for pg to not try to relentlessly improve, but the point about the founders stands.

<comment><USER9> I think we would all agree, none of our communication is ever flawless, including mine. I also think that from PG position he can only hold peoples hands for so long until they have to be big boys and get on there own feet and get there ass in gear. For all those who have played sports, great coaches treat different players differently based on how they best respond and that allows them to get the maximum effort from their talent. All I am offering in this thread is maybe there is something more that can be done from a new angle, for both PG and the founders growth and a solution to make the YC process even better.

<comment><USER11> Sure, and there's probably a subset in there that would actually be successful with someone else but just have a personality mismatch with Paul. But it's probably a minority of those who couldn't make it work with him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Honestly I think this same observation is true of engineers (good ones you can give them the direction and they'll go work out how to solve whatever problem they're having, the bad ones will look at you blankly and you end up doing the work yourself).

And then, as someone who has been a founder, an engineer and a corporate worker in enterprise during my career to date, I realized that this is also true of people in big companies.

I guess in startup world the stakes are greater _(your company will fail vs you won't get promoted or make bonus)_ but this is no different to middle managers who reach a glass ceiling.

The bottom line is this: if you identify with the negative character trait PG identifies, you need to snap out of it anyway regardless of whether you're being bold and doing a startup or whether you want to play it safe and take a corporate job.

</comment><comment><USER13> While I think that PG is probably right in his observation, it is not actually very helpful. It is kind of like when he said, "When we haven't heard from, or about, a startup for a couple months, that's a bad sign. If we send them an email asking what's up, and they don't reply, that's a really bad sign." [1] Well... ok. But is that cause or effect? I doubt business was booming and they just decided to stop responding to email.

If you have a startup that is growing I am sure it is easier to take advice and get funding. ...all sorts of things. If the business is not doing as well I can see where it is more difficult to see the correct action.

[1] <http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html>

<comment><USER10> It's true I didn't write this as a source of advice for founders so much as just a report on a surprising (to me) connection I'd discovered. But it's not useless. It should be very useful to investors, for example, because it offers a quick way to detect which startups will succeed. It even helped me understand the procedure we've evolved for YC interviews. What we do during YC interviews is essentially to start YC right then, as if we'd funded them. Now I know why that works so well.

It should also be useful for founders, as a warning sign to look for. People can change, and they can also stand outside themselves to some degree. So some founders will probably be able to read something like this and ask themselves "does this happen with us?" and if the answer is yes, to try to be less timid.

<comment><USER14> People who are timid are less willing to attack schleps, to acknowledge schleps and ask for help with schleps. Maybe this is the correlation? Maybe people are timid because they are embarrassed or unconfident in their ability to overcome schleps? Maybe they put up a wall or get defensive so that others who seem smart (and who blow through schleps) don't see them as unintelligent.

This is why successful people I have interacted with have most often been extremely welcoming and nice, because they have learned that putting everything on the table when surrounded by peers and mentors is the best trait of success.

If this is the case then the solution to making more successful companies (and not "wasting" investment) is to get around this dilemma somehow. The solution might be for founders to practice a little "mindfulness" or "self-awareness" throughout the day. This could be a check-in with your body before meetings or after an important call in the form of being aware of the breath or feeling sensations like your feet on the floor. If your body is tight or you are feeling defensive or unconfident then air it out.

Any other ways people think founders can solve this dilemma?

<comment><USER15> It's quite possible that the situation is different in academia, but in my line of work I tend to find the opposite: some of the most accomplished people are very cautious and unwilling to take strong positions without thinking them over. Usually, because they are so knowledgeable and thoughtful that they can, as soon as they start saying anything, see a million possible caveats. In the worst case that can be paralyzing, but it can also help avoid the opposite behavior: the hot-headed, confident, untimid person who just doesn't really know enough (or think over what they know) to realize why they should be more cautious about overarching claims, especially on questions that a _lot_ of smart people have looked into already.

It's not a universal correlation, but I've generally noticed junior and less knowledgeable people (graduate students, early-career professors, etc.) to be much more brash, confident, and even aggressive in that sense than accomplished researchers, though there is a bit of an inverted-U curve (undergraduates and 1st-year graduate students tend to be very timid). Of the people I've met professionally, probably the most humble, and least willing to make strong statements without thinking them over and later offering a tentative opinion with caveats, was Bob Moog, who is also probably the smartest and most accomplished person I've met professionally.

<comment><USER16> I agree with your assessment, and I think in many ways one of the critical parts to learn is how to assess when it is ok to "turn off" the critical eye and be brash and confident and aggressive.

Some of my most valuable experiences stemmed from just throwing myself in on the deep end instead of waiting to analyze all the implications. But at the same time those experiences were terribly _hard_, and carried a great deal of risk. E.g. my first company was an ISP. Started it with some friends at 19. Knew _nothing_ about running a business or about setting up a large scale WAN, or about accounting, or sales, or configuring Linux servers. A year later I'd had hard, brutal and effective lessons in all of that and more.

If I'd spent time carefully trying to figure out the risks and implications beforehand, I doubt I'd have started that company. It didn't make me wealthy, but it was definitively worth it in terms of what I learned, and the connections I made also led directly to my next job and overall it has been pretty vital to my career.

On the other hand, there are many situations where not stepping back and being careful and considered and chasing down the implications up-front would've had disastrous consequences.

The problem isn't being cautious, if you know when not to be, but not taking action. Being cautious because you want to chase down and understand the implications is very different from being timid about addressing weaknesses in your knowledge. Whether you address those weaknesses with research or by trying is less important than avoiding paralysis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> While it's tempting to treat "resourcefulness" as a trait intrinsic to founders, in my experience it can be a sharp function of the founder/startup fit. When I did YC, I didn't feel resourceful at all, but that's because I was working on the wrong problems. (Don't ask; it was painful.) As soon as I switched to education and technical publishing (the _Ruby on Rails Tutorial_ , started after YC), I was suddenly resourceful as all get-out—and I started to feel unstoppable. I suspect that if I ever do YC again, the resourcefulness transformation will appear miraculous, not because of any change in my intrinsic resourcefulness, but because the new startup will be a much better fit for my interests and abilities.

One could argue that truly resourceful founders will iterate until they find a good fit. That's probably true—and it's exactly what I did. It's just that sometimes the penultimate "iteration" involves shutting the old thing down and starting something new. Chalk it up to my Artix Phase (<http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html>).

<comment><USER10> It can also change over time, especially in younger founders. As Garry pointed out elsewhere in this thread, most schools and jobs train you to be somewhat passive.

<comment><USER18> I agree with this. I actually didn't go the route of school, preferring to just go out on my own, and I was/am amazed at all the passivity.

I think if anything the defining quality of my career is a total lack of being passive. Having no formal training allows you the quality of never being intimidated.

I didn't know anything when I started. I am not concerned about taking on any challenge I know nothing about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This:

 _My feeling with the bad groups is that coming into office hours, they've already decided what they're going to do and everything I say is being put through an internal process in their heads, which either desperately tries to munge what I've said into something that conforms with their decision or just outright dismisses it and creates a rationalization for doing so. They may not even be conscious of this process but that's what I think is happening when you say something to bad groups and they have that glazed over look. I don't think it's confusion or lack of understanding per se, it's this internal process at work._

is precisely what happens with students, too. A few weeks ago a former student wrote to me about career choices and whether she should major in biochem or English, because she'd struggled in biochem classes. My girlfriend was a biochem major, so together we wrote a thorough response that turned into an essay called "How to think about science, becoming a scientist, and life" that should go up soon. After spending a couple hours on the response, we sent it, and I got back an e-mail from the student saying. . . she's going to go to law school and "become a judge."

So all of the considered reasoning and description and discussion was merely "put through an internal process in" her head. Experiences like this teach me why a) a lot of professors aren't eager to interact with students and often distance themselves from students and b) why writing "How to get your professors' attention, along with coaching and mentoring" was useful, if only for the relative handful of students who get it: [http://jseliger.com/2010/10/02/how-to-get-your- professors%E2...](http://jseliger.com/2010/10/02/how-to-get-your- professors%E2%80%99-attention-or-how-to-get-the-coaching-and-mentorship-you- need) .

<comment><USER20> I'm not saying your student didn't have a pre-filter as you describe. On the other hand, you may have been just one source of advice for your student. Asking for advice doesn't mean that taking it is always the best course, it's information to be weighed against all other advice and information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> At a company I used to work at they used to put the new engineers through kindergarten. They had a few tasks that needed doing and the way to get these tasks done needed a little bit of resourcefulness.

One of the tasks was to get a set of data from a very old computer (PDP-11) into excel. Of course there were lots of problems with doing this and of course most things were broken.

I was working at some crappy desk hidden near the PDP-11. The easiest solution I would tell everyone was to type the numbers into a laptop, it would take them about 2 hours.

The difference in the way people would listen to what I would tell them was as different as their responses. Most people would try something for about an hour or so then type it in. A few resourceful people would implement some very amazing solutions and then tell me about it, I was impressed. And then there were quite a few people who would spend two days trying to implement a technical solution only to end up typing it in or just give up completely.

Some of the resourceful results where quite simple. The main thing I found was that trying to tell the difference between the resourceful people who came up with a solution in 30 minutes and those who took 2 days was impossible. Neither of them really wanted to hear my answer. Observing the differences in how people would deal with the problem and then with the advice was enlightening to say the least.

The people who gave up because they didn't want to type in data for 2 hours ceased their employment rather quickly.

</comment><comment><USER22> Reminds me of an anecdote about Tim Cook:

      In a meeting convened to tackle a problem in China,
      he had said: "This is really bad someone should be in
      China driving this." Thirty-minutes in the meeting he
      chided Sabih Khan, the then operations executive,
      saying "Why are you still here?". Khan responded by
      immediately booking a ticket to China, sans a change
      of clothes.

<http://www.theverge.com/2011/08/24/tim-cook-apples-ceo/>

<comment><USER23> Which brings up a relevant point: It is very easy for an organization to undermine the resourcefulness of its employees. Indeed, this is so common that one may eventually come to expect it.

That's why this story is as much of a story about Tim Cook as it is about Sabih Khan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's all about the anxiety caused by the fear.

Deep-down the unresourceful founders are afraid, which causes anxiety that their decisions are wrong, so anything that approaches being wrong causes the anxiety to repress and get in the way of the freedom to explore things.

Resourcefulness is also about letting new ideas and opportunities come to you, which helps if you listen to your unconscious, which you can't do if anxiety makes your conscious mind jumpy.

</comment><comment><USER25> It bothers me to hear this, because I know that I tend to fall on the "hard to talk to" side. I used to be _really_ bad at this kind of resourcefulness, and I would have a hard time "chasing down" those various implications. I like to think that I'm better now.

I think that, as with many areas, deliberate practice has helped.

<comment><USER26> Can you specify how you did deliberate practice to overcome that weakness?

<comment><USER27> Just sit down and think not just about _what_ a person said, but _why_ they are saying it.

If my dad says, "Son, never date girls who are hippies", that probably means that he himself was burned from an experience like that. While reading it plain would have given me a catch-all theory that is not necessarily true, reading into the reasons told me two extra factoids: my dad doesn't want me to get hurt, and he has dated a hippie girl and that ended badly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This effect goes both ways; resourceful people should be wary of people who are hard to listen to. I feel like when I'm speaking to someone on the same wavelength about a specific topic it's quite easy to take shortcuts through a lot of the conversation with a simple nod and a word.

The opposite type of conversation feels like you're walking through a swamp with no end. You know exactly where they're going with their point many sentences before they reach it, however they continue to drag out the thought.

</comment><comment><USER29> The note at the end is priceless.

I think there is something in operating under a fearful authority that spoils people in this way — that causes them to make excuses, obfuscate, counterattack, pass the buck or shut down when confronted by a sound argument against their way of thinking.

Once someone has succumbed to the politics within a large organization, they have likely internalized these patterns of dealing with objections.

<comment><USER30> This is a critical observation. By default, for most people who have been through the modern school system, and/or worked for companies -- they're used to covering their ass and sounding smart.

The market doesn't care about cover-your-ass -- it only cares if their problems get solved and if your product is any good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> So here is a reference, 'Confronting Reality' by Bossidy and Charan [1] it's worth a read. (Their book on execution is better but they are both worth reading)

The core thesis is exactly what Paul writes about, successful enterprises are successful at confronting a reality which does not agree with their world view, or their desired world view. Fundamentally, if there is a problem, or more importantly a problem in a place where you won't look, it needs to be dealt with. If you don't deal with it sooner, then you will be forced to deal with it when it does so much damage that you cannot deny it any more.

People who can confront those issues fix them when they are small and thus don't waste any time on excess damage control.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Confronting-Reality-Doing-Matters- Thin...](http://www.amazon.com/Confronting-Reality-Doing-Matters- Things/dp/B001T0I7KA/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_3)

</comment><comment><USER32> Hmm...not sure about the conclusion from the data here.

Maybe they lacked "resourcefullness" (noticed by a difficulty in closing) because their startup wasn't so hot...maybe they were hard to talk to because, again, their startup wasn't so great and they didn't want to talk about it.

It's the old "basketball players are tall because they are good at basketball" thinking...

Look deeper, I suggest the cause-effect be inverted.

</comment><comment><USER33> The partner note at the bottom is spot on. I have reflectively seen myself doing it. I used to get so focused on the particular idea I had that I lost sight of the fact I was solving a problem, for which there were likely many solutions – blinded by wanting to simply do it the way I had in my head. Conversations would just be a way for me to validate my concrete idea, not to search for additional ideas or entirely new approaches to the problem.

I like this essay because it serves as a personal reminder to always avoid that. As soon as you close your mind off from the ideas others may give you (directly or indirectly), you've lost.

</comment><comment><USER34> _The unsuccessful founders weren't stupid. Intellectually they were as capable as the successful founders of following all the implications of what one said to them. They just weren't eager to._

Startup founders should read 'The Denial of Death' ([http://www.amazon.com/Denial-Death-Ernest- Becker/dp/06848324...](http://www.amazon.com/Denial-Death-Ernest- Becker/dp/0684832402))

Of course, as a founder, you could make it a point to embrace the reality not just of your inevitable death, but also your startup's inevitable eventual death.

I say this because I'm guessing a lot of the things pg says to the least successful startups involves the reality that their startup will die if there are not quick and radical changes to some part of the business.

I'm sure _many_ physicians must have this problem when talking to their patients who smoke, binge-eat, do not take their medicine, etc.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is going to sound mean, but I don't mean to be mean. I am genuinely curios:

Could you describe "hard to talk to" as not having very high social skills? I would say that a lot of average folk could be described as hard to talk to, but super smooth people are never hard to talk to.

So I mean to restrict my question to well above average social skills.

And this leads me to my next question. Could it be that social skills require more brain power than traditionally intellectual pursuits?

We know from AI work that things which come naturally to humans are some of the most computationally intensive and most difficult to replicate.

Whereas things like math and playing chess are much easier to implement in software.

Doing math in your head can feel much more difficult than just having a conversation with someone. But what if having a conversation feels easier only because a huge amount of brain power is genetically devoted to vision, language processing, face recognition, and reading other humans' emotions?

(This is what's going to get me grayed out) What if socially awkward geeks are truly _lacking_ brain power compared to socially super smooth but not particularly intellectual people?

And does pg's experience prove that social smoothness provides higher fitness even in the high-tech startup environment?

Are then technically brilliant but socially awkward people truly less _fit_ in almost all areas of life?

Do socially awkward people only out-compete socially smooth people strictly in situations where interaction among humans is truly minimal?

<comment><USER36> > Do socially awkward people only out-compete socially smooth people strictly > in situations where interaction among humans is truly minimal?

As someone who's been socially awkward in the past (yet good with math, a typical nerd type I guess) but who eventually taught himself to be social to the extent that I can arguably surpass most of my former friends at this game (yet who is nowhere near Paris Hilton yet), here is my hard-won perspective:

1\. Being truly social requires two things: (a) social experience, (2) a sophisticated theory of mind, a brain "faculty" that is incredibly resource- intensive, possibly more so than the faculty which performs abstract reasoning. In evolutionary biology, there is an influential theory which claims that it was theory of mind (which is being able to figure out what others think) that developed due to the pressure of living in groups and not tool-making that was the original cause of humans becoming sentient. This is why I don't believe for a second those who say that women are less smart than men (most women were simply taught to be dependent on others from the early age).

2\. Our education system especially tends to value social skills less than hard problem-solving skills and therefore convinces us at early age that being social requires less brain power than doing math (because "brainy" is always "good"). This is because of two things (1) people with high social skills are somewhat more likely to steal money from you or cheat or use you in some other way without you ever knowing it, (2) most people except the autistic minority are capable of powerful theory-of-mind type thinking given enough social exposure, while only a select minority (whether because of education or biology) is capable of high-level abstract reasoning.

3\. At one point in my life I felt I could be very social if I wanted (and I indeed could), yet I still avoided social interactions because being social felt incredibly draining to me (all those neurons firing consume glucose...) and I did not learn yet to derive pleasure from being social.

4\. People who are very good at being social (past a certain threshold) derive a lot of pleasure from it, to the extent that they forgo most non-social intellectual pursuits which they perceive as less rewarding. This is actually a dangerous trap to fall into (similar to a drug addiction) if your main area of work requires quiet contemplation.

5\. People who are truly brilliant (I'm not there yet) learn to balance the amount of interaction with others (and pick those they interact with carefully) because they understand that social withdrawal can give them a serious advantage, since most of the society (perhaps except tiger-educated Asian kids) falls squarely into the social-driven category.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think both are just manifestations of intellectual curiosity - some people, when they talk to you, are asking themselves: "what is this guy trying to say?" So they listen. Those same people, when they see something unusual, for example, a new type of design, they ask themselves - why did these people do this? So they are constantly discovering, and it's that discovering of methods and ways that ultimately leads to them discovering the path that works.

The other people - the non-listeners - are not observing what's going on. They are looking inwards, so are unable to react to changes, and they are unable to see the path when they stumble across it.

<comment><USER5> "manifestations of intellectual curiosity"

Exactly. A person who is constantly reverse engineering business, peoples behavior and life in general.

Curiosity is a big thing. Before I wrote this reply I clicked your handle to see what you did and who you are. I guess that's fairly common on HN but there are people that I know in the local area who still haven't visited my website and have no idea what I do. They just aren't curious in the least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> To further explore this topic, I would recommend reading the book Iconoclast[1]. It identifies "a lack of fear and mental laziness" as some of the key qualities rare extraordinary individuals possess. Having a child's mind and looking at things fresh was another way of putting it for me at the time I read it.

Reading PG's post, it immediately reminded me of the detailed analysis of this quality in the book.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Iconoclast-Neuroscientist-Reveals- Thin...](http://www.amazon.com/Iconoclast-Neuroscientist-Reveals-Think- Differently/dp/1422133303/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327002753&sr=8-1)

</comment><comment><USER39> I think entrepreneurs/founders are inundated with so much advice from every direction that their brains train themselves to ignore all advice at the present moment and maybe give it a thought later.

This is actually a good thing since a founder needs to have capacity for independent thought but it misfires when the advice is from someone like pg.

My recommendation would be to consciously admit when you are doing this and then to consciously stop yourself from doing it when someone really knowledgeable is talking to you.

</comment><comment><USER40> The "hard to talk to" test is almost the perfect description of how I feel about working with certain clients (for lack of a better phrase) in my current job.

Prior to this gig, I would have said one my strengths was actually working and communicating with users of software I helped write or support.

Now, it seems like our team is mostly "walled off" from the external people we could do the most for.

Any tips out there for breaking through that wall? It is really discouraging . . .

<comment><USER41> I don't know if you believe in the 'Myers Briggs' stuff (I do to an extent) - but one of the most valuable tools with it (which isn't often mentioned) is to look out for any of your types switching from one to the other.

If this is happening it means you are under stress, and once you can spot it and do something about it, it's really powerful.

<comment><USER8> Myers Briggs is a descriptive, not prescriptive, categorization of personality types; belief doesn't enter into it. Like all categorizations, it's merely a useful description of people with a fixed precision of 16. If 16 is an accurate enough categorization for a particular need, then Myers Briggs is sufficient. And like all categorizations, it's just a single way of looking at things, it's not in any way authoritative. You can't dis-believe in a categorization system.

<comment><USER42> I think the GP was talking about belief in the usefulness (or reliability or validity) of Myers Briggs. Note that the MBTI doesn't just classify people into 16 categories; it classifies people into discontinuous binary categories along 4 axes, obviously resulting in a total of 16 categories. It's certainly useful to think about peoples' positions along those 4 axes, although maybe there are other axes more useful for describing personalities in some situations. However, I find the idea of absolute binary classification (i.e. you're either an introvert or an extrovert, there are no shades of gray) hard to swallow.

For what it's worth, Wikipedia has some interesting summaries of criticisms of the MTBI's validity and reliability. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers- Briggs_Type_Indicator#Val...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers- Briggs_Type_Indicator#Validity)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Reminds me of the historic "Message to Garcia" <http://www.foundationsmag.com/garcia.html>

"The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, "Where is he at?"

By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this or that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing—"Carry a message to Garcia."

<comment><USER26> Ok that seems stupid in the extreme.

Yes in this case he was right, but what if you knew something about where the man is? He might have saved days of this crucial journey.

To me, he is no smarter than I would be if I was late for a train and ran out of the house rather than look up how to get to the trainstation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> An even older adage (from Confucius) : "I will hold up one corner. If the student does not return, with enthusiasm, having raised the other three, the Lesson ends."

<comment><USER45> Hm, the version I have runs

        'The Master said, "I do not open the way for students who are not driven with eagerness;
        I do not supply a vocabulary for students who are not trying desperately to find the language for their ideas.
        If on showing students one corner they do not come back to me with the other three, I will not repeat myself."'

(Analects 7.8)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I would love to see more stories of YC companies that didn't work out (no personal details needed of course). It seems like the weeding process is good enough to have a very high success rate so the ones that don't do well should be good examples to keep in mind.

</comment><comment><USER47> I think the primary flaw that PG has identified in start-up founders who fail is the inability to acknowledge and deal with potential weaknesses in your plans.

This can come as a result of many things, but here are a few off the top of my head: 1)Having a set idea about a product or feature and not wanting to adjust it to user feedback due to being enamored with that idea. 2)Not wanting to accept that something will take many hours of tedious work and then having to put in that tedious work. 3)Worrying that if X essential feature is necessary that you don't have the ability to create X 4)Having to learn and work hard in an area that doesn't come naturally to you (tech founder doing sales/marketing or non-tech founder doing programming) 5)Social encounters that require one of the following hard to master traits: charisma, confidence, tact, or stubbornness. Social anxiety or nervousness are a given for most people trying to employ these (VC pitches are the obvious example here, but closing a big deal or just talking to your users also applies). 6)Having to seek/turn down investment after working on the basis that you were going to do the opposite. 7)Etc.

I don't think the communication with the YC partners is necessarily the problem (although if you can't communicate well with them, then it's likely you can't communicate well in other crucial areas. Even socially awkward types like Zuck and Houston have found a way over time to communicate well where they need to), it's just a symptom of it. If you can't communicate well with them then it's likely because they're exposing you to some uncomfortable truths that you don't want to hear. But there are still founders who are bad communicators who have the necessary honesty about their business to succeed.

</comment><comment><USER48> > I could never quite tell if they understood what I was saying.

Still it seems this is just coming down to communication. Is it possible that the less successful ones were doing things in areas where you personally had less expertise? Perhaps your advice was impractical or irrelevant, but they felt intimidated into silence rather than feeling they could discuss the problems honestly and see how the advice could be adapted.

<comment><USER10> You are (unconsciously) giving me far too much credit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I think a _huge_ portion of the blame of this is on the YC partners.

I'm extremely comfortable debating and discussing ideas in an extremely logical and thoughtful way. My favorite question every day to myself is "If I was starting over today what would I do". And Joe Kraus's "Face reality".

I found it impossible to do that during my YC interview though. From minute one it was a series of arrogant and condescending statements after another. Their ideas were nuggets of golden insight and my (far more educated in many instances) responses were dismissed out of hand.

I've had countless discussions of the same type with many other smart people (successful founders, investors, regular smart people) before and since. Some who raised far more difficult questions. I have reason to suspect the biggest problem was the YC partners and not some problem I have being flexible or thoughtful.

I think the essay as well as this quote are very revealing:

 _With the good groups, you can tell that everything you say is being looked at with fresh eyes and even if it's dismissed, it's because of some logical reason e.g. "we already tried that" or "from speaking to our users that isn't what they'd like," etc. Those groups never have that glazed over look._

I think you're mistaking some founders ability to placate you with thoughtfulness in many, but certainly not all, cases.

One person who publicly talked about this phenomenon (in a joking way) was one of the founders of Heroku. He said that pg said "You're an Oracle killer" so he "smiled and nodded because I wanted to get in" (paraphrasing).

I think that's very indicative of the way many founders probably feel when talking to the YC partners. The ones who disregard that idea are likely marked as "difficult to talk to."

I think there's a very real danger you guys aren't hearing stuff like this because who in their right mind would tell you and who would you listen to? You would probably just say they're difficult to talk to.

The problem with being so damn smart (which all the YC partners truly are) is that you can start to think that any problem you run into (like founders who seem hard to talk to) you're assumption is that it's their fault instead of your own.

I do think there's some unbiased truth to the essay and maybe the founders who are good at placating will make better founders. But you have to consider: would Bill Gates or Steve Jobs really have smiled and nodded or would they have said "What the hell are you talking about, that's stupid." (We know what Jobs would have done anyway.)

I'm still a really big fan of YC and all the YC partners, but I do think you might have let some arrogance creep in to your process. You guys are doing alright though, so feel free to ignore little ol' me.

<comment><USER50> The purpose of the interview is to find people who will make good founders. It is not a salon for intellectuals to sit around and be "comfortable debating and discussing ideas in an extremely logical and thoughtful way". It's closer to a boxing match. We're definitely not looking for people to "smile and nod". In fact, we sometimes make misleading suggestions in order to see how founders respond, so simply agreeing with everything is definitely not a winning strategy.

<comment><USER18> "In fact, we sometimes make misleading suggestions in order to see how founders respond"

Wait, really?... Being intellectually dishonest is not cool. If you cannot figure out the winning strategy without lying then you're not trying hard enough.

Asking questions where you are honestly open to consideration even though it seems wrong, that's great. Knowingly making misleading suggestions isn't.

<comment><USER50> I mean "misleading" as in "leading in the wrong direction", such as "have you considered doing X?", where X is something that I think is a bad idea. If they agree with every I idea I have, then they will even agree with bad ideas, and won't make for a very effective founder (because the reality is that investors will make all kinds of dumb suggestions).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I think Paul is only partially right. There is another side to this. It is the people that do ask a lot of questions that are usually more able to look at things from a different perspective and to be innovative. A man of action is great for getting things done but he (or she) will usually always do things the same old and usual way and not think much about what he is doing.

A more contemplative person will ask a lot of questions and figure out the problem in its entirety and then be able to test the boundaries and question the implicit assumptions.

I think a good team requires one of each, although having at least on man (or woman) of action for a team is important.

</comment><comment><USER52> Please. This is the manager's side of the argument whenever there is miscommunication. There are 100 you things you can do to fix communication problems.

Besides being overly general without any anecdotes, this article completely overlooks that there are solutions to miscommunication on both sides of the table, and that some people simply are not suited to work together, whether in a investor-to-founder relationship, or at the manager-employee level.

</comment><comment><USER53> I agree with Paul's comments here, and think they hold true far outside the bounds of this conversation. However, there is something about the context in the original post that doesn't seem clear to me. It relates to what qualifies as "being hard to talk to."

It sounds like the label is being assigned to those who don't jump at something, take a ball and run with it, or whatever metaphor you'd like to insert. And the summary reaches a point of "hard to talk to yields lack of resourcefulness." And as evidence, those who weren't hard to talk to were those who closed funding, grabbed users, or some other metric. And those who were hard to talk to were the ones who didn't.

Those who succeeded at something were easy to talk to, but those who didn't succeed at something were more difficult? Not really a surprise, but what's smoke and what's fire? Seems to me there exists the possibility that failure in those areas may be the cause, and hard-to-talk-to was merely a symptom representative of a point in time.

I imagine this is contextual in the relationship of YC to its member companies, but from an outsider's perspective I could see this working out differently.

</comment><comment><USER54> This was a very insightful post which confirms my experience that generally working with people you can't communicate easily with almost always leads to bad results. What I'm wondering though, is if it really is a property of the person, or the fit between the two parties. Some people just don't get each other. Maybe their values are too far apart or something. Maybe they try to follow the other parties implications, but it leads somewhere they don't want to go, or then they cannot even fill in the blanks correctly because of different mental models.

So an alternative explanation for pg's observation is that when there is founder-advisor fit, communication is easy, because both parties can follow the implications of the other party and value similar things. Then the startups with better founder-advisor fit do better in the outside world, because they can actually benefit from the advice they are getting, whereas for the ones without founder-advisor fit the advice is pure noise to them, and does not guide them in the right direction (that is the one they want to go).

</comment><comment><USER55> I have of late been grappling with Dunning-Kruger, which I'd like to apply to this topic.

How do I know if I have this problem? Because everyone filters advice through their brain in one way or another, right? How can I tell if my brain is filtering in such a way to conform advice to my preconceptions, or if I'm truly grappling with the advice?

And if I do have this problem, how do I fix it? Is it remediable?

</comment><comment><USER56> > My feeling with the bad groups is that coming into office hours, they've > already decided what they're going to do and everything I say is being put > through an internal process in their heads, which either desperately tries > to munge what I've said into something that conforms with their decision or > just outright dismisses it and creates a rationalization for doing so. They > may not even be conscious of this process but that's what I think is > happening when you say something to bad groups and they have that glazed > over look. I don't think it's confusion or lack of understanding per se, > it's this internal process at work.

This sounds suspiciously like a rousing game of "Why Don't You/Yes But". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_analysis#Why_Don....](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_analysis#Why_Don.27t_You.2FYes_But)

</comment><comment><USER57> A great deal of this article seemed to be concerned more about flexibility than resourcefulness.

"Like real world resourcefulness, conversational resourcefulness often means doing things you don't want to. Chasing down all the implications of what's said to you can sometimes lead to uncomfortable conclusions."

"My feeling with the bad groups is that coming into office hours, they've already decided what they're going to do and everything I say is being put through an internal process in their heads, which either desperately tries to munge what I've said into something that conforms with their decision or just outright dismisses it and creates a rationalization for doing so."

This sounds like a testament to the lean-startup movement, where success is more dictated on the ability to iterate on user feedback rather than being stuck in one static idea of what your business is or is meant to be.

</comment><comment><USER58> Another indicator of this is verbal ping-pong. How granular you have to answer questions/give direction. If you get a lot of "What do I do next?" or "you never told me to do that!" A non-resourceful person would say "How am I supposed to know that an introduction means X, Y, Z?!"

</comment><comment><USER59> I've spent much of my professional career thinking about this concept, because I've experienced it so often, but more out of frustration for my peers who DON'T seem to work this way.

There is nothing better than the feeling of clicking with someone intellectually, or even on a romantic level, when either of you can say one word and the other just gets it.

That said, there is nothing more frustrating than watching a peer, co-founder, or employee doing the exact opposite. PG doesn't mention the situation where you're witnessing someone over-explain something, when the other party clearly understood after one word, but the person explaining hasn't realized it. This infuriates me to no end (especially when pitching), but it's almost impossible to explain this to the guilty party!

</comment><comment><USER60> I want to know about the successful exceptions. Which groups succeeded despite being hard to talk to?

</comment><comment><USER61> This just crystalized something for me. I like to create stuff with people. Once I find that someone is thoughtful, reflective, or whatever you want to call it, I like to talk with them in a manner that prods the abstract. It now makes sense to me that my most successful collaborations have happened with people with whom I can easily speak in the abstract. Details and competence are real things, but they are not the most important things by a long shot. Details can't be accounted for except for the fact that they will arise and they will have to be dealt with in one manner or another. Also, besides a reticence to talk in the abstract, one thing that puts serious doubt in my mind about people is self-help books.

<comment><USER62> _Also, besides a reticence to talk in the abstract, one thing that puts serious doubt in my mind about people is self-help books._

Any particular reasons?

<comment><USER61> Well, I am sure that some will disagree, but what I've seen, most of what is in self-help books is common sense, although the best wrap it in amusing or counter-intuitive anecdotes. I think self-help allows people to convince themselves that there's formulae to life, when it's really just a matter of doing things in earnest and learning as you go.

So, basically I see self-help books as a sign that someone over-values impersonal advice. Not a sign of confidence, IMHO.

<comment><USER63> So you're saying the formula is to do things in earnest and learn as you go?

<comment><USER61> Hardly a formula. But sure, even if you consider it to be one, it's not book worthy. It's common sense.

<comment><USER64> Common sense does not exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I like that at the end they added:

"With the good groups, you can tell that everything you say is being looked at with fresh eyes and even if it's dismissed, it's because of some logical reason e.g. "we already tried that" or "from speaking to our users that isn't what they'd like," etc. Those groups never have that glazed over look."

Because honestly ... sometimes it suck when someone with general knowledge tells you to do something you've already tried, and you have been having success with your own paradigm. Sometimes it's hard to work with someone who has a different paradigm but is also successful. Which is a shame! It would have been great to know that there's more than one way to approach things.

</comment><comment><USER66> Regardless of profession I think listening and reading are the most important skills.

Unfortunately I find many technology people are programmed to discount or deprecate any and all "soft" skills.

</comment><comment><USER67> Thanks for pinging the article. It applies very well to my actual situation, which is different and yet similar in its essence. I am still in school and when I had problems I dealt with it by myself no matter how hard or the quantity of extra activities. Since then I have learned to rely on the help of actual people not only internet. I guess thats a problem many of you guys already solved. Anyway, it was mine to solve and this article only makes the map neater.

</comment><comment><USER64> It's called "Will"

Schopenhauer and Nietzsche figured this out a long time ago.

</comment><comment><USER68> Sounds like executive intelligence coupled with a willingness to take personal responsibility if it fails - that's why they chase up the implications. Hard to talk to can also translate into talking to users. The paradox with startups comes in building something very much for yourself, but also very much for other people: possibly a similar maturity in talking to others, requiring a mental leap of faith.

</comment><comment><USER69> This elegantly summarizes some thoughts I've been having myself the past years.

PG applies it to founders, whereas I apply to potential friends.

The word I've been using internally for this: pounceability. As in, with high- quality friends they will POUNCE on stuff you say to them and return to you later having independently researched whatever it was that you told them about. Whereas others have to be hammered into submission pretty much.

</comment><comment><USER70> @pg are you giving founders psychometric tests?

Resourcefulness might decompose into several well-defined traits or aptitudes. If I had to guess, I'd expect successful startup founders to score low for neuroticism, high in conscientiousness & openness as well as having an internal locus of control.

This could be invaluable, both in selecting the companies as well as for coaching and teaching.

</comment><comment><USER71> The note at the end perfectly described myself :( Now the question is: how to improve? How to be better?

</comment><comment><USER7> Though I'm not otherwise a big fan of Donald Trump, I read one of his books to see what he had to say. The book was called "Think Like A Champion" (I suppose that says something about Trump, but let that go by).

He pointed something out which I thought was a great business lesson: if you can't explain yourself in 5 minutes or less, you are going to be in trouble.

Relating this to pg's story, it means: you have to be able to express your ideas cleanly, succintly, and then forget all about them so you can take feedback. You have to drop the fact that it's "your idea" and just listen to what is being said.

I've worked with a number of people who were really, really, really excellent technically, but you could literally _see_ the cogs churning in their head as you were speaking to them. And it was very much like what Paul describes, a sort of glazed over look. Afterwards, you'd have to rev the same idea with the a few times until they got it, or until you had to give up and make a decision by yourself.

I think it's a hard habit for some people to break, but it can be done.

<comment><USER72> I think glazing is something different - basically, when you're ignoring what's being said.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> I wonder how much this "resourcefulness" characteristic is innate vs learned?

Can you learn to be more resourceful? To be easier to talk to?

I think you can, but aside from going out there and doing your thing and failing and trying again, I don't see how.

</comment><comment><USER74> True, it can be hard to think about something, if it means we have to then do something irksome, or terrifying, or beneath us etc.

But why not _ask_ them? They mightn't know (or be right), but they have inside information.

</comment><comment><USER75> Is this a play on "A word to the Bad" - Jermaine Jackson ?

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88d67-ypsXM&noredirect=1](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88d67-ypsXM&noredirect=1)

</comment><comment><USER76> How do you say that you actually have this skill on a resume without sounding like a pompous d-bag?

<comment><USER77> Same as all other skills: give examples from your past where you demonstrate the relevant skill (and don't explicitly say that you have it)

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> It looks like PG is talking about the need of being flexible and open-minded.

<comment><USER18> I don't read that from the writing. It just isn't relevant to what he is saying.

What he is saying is, taking the ball and running with it on your own, and really attacking the issue, for all it's faults is better than saying you're taking the ball and running with it, and instead allowing challenges throw you off the path.

That's what I read from it. Nothing about flexibility or being open minded. You can be both of those things, and still allow challenges to make you focus on other topics.

<comment><USER78> How does "difficulty to talk with" fit into your picture of "really attacking the issue"?

<comment><USER18> If you're really attacking the issue, you're not concerned with talking about it.

The whole issue comes down to fear. Fear that the challenges and issues are a negative, and feeling embarrassed by it.

Being bold, attacking the issue, tracking down details, giving updates on status without fear. These are the qualities.

Vs.

Being timid. Hearing the request, and putting it off because you don't know where to start. Not asking for help because you don't want to be thought of as someone who doesn't know something. Working on other tasks that you are good at, but not addressing the tasks you're not good at. The next time you think about it (aside from worry), is you being asked for a status and you have nothing. You put off the email.

That's the difference no? That's what I see working in startups.

There are the types that you hand them something, and they own it, and there are the types that you hand them something, and they fidget with it, and delay it at the first challenge that they don't know.

Perhaps I'm reading it wrong. That's my experience.

<comment><USER78> You are describing it right. Note that being flexible and open-minded helps to overcome fear of making a mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> "bad groups is that coming into office hours, they've already decided what they're going to do"

If someone has this kind of set in mind and not listening to the context what the other end has to say meritocracy is at best the outcome.

</comment><comment><USER80> How much of a factor in pg's perception is the know-it-all phenomenon, I wonder? I find the most unteachable folks to be the ones who already _"know."_

</comment><comment><USER81> I don't know if 'resourcefulness' is the right description for trait pg observed. I think 'assertiveness' is more accurate.

<comment><USER82> 'Assertiveness' is decidedly the wrong word (though it might apply to the specific example that he mentioned).

Resourcefulness means that you can do a lot with a little. In the context of this piece, it means you can turn a little advice into a lot of (useful) action.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> I'm not an investor, but I've had a parallel experience having been involved with roughly 150 tech contracts in my career.

A strong predictor for mediocrity is when communication is troubled. If we're unable to have two-way conversations with all project stakeholders, it's almost a guarantee that we'll end up delivering something that has less value than it could, at a higher cost than was possible, and that nobody is thrilled with.

</comment><comment><USER84> word to the wise pg, watch out for getting nailed for age discrimination...

</comment><comment><USER85> Paul Graham is my idol! Always looking forward to getting more and more stuff from him.

</comment><comment><USER86> "A Word to the Resourceful" or "Do or Do not, there is no try"

</comment><comment><USER87> This reminds me of the book "Blink" by Malcom Gladwell. Something doesn't seem right and our instincts pick up on it way before we understand it.

Communication is such an import part of business, relationships, and life. If there is a lack of communication it can spell trouble in many different areas down the line. In this case it seemed to be an indicator of many other problems as well.

Thanks for sharing, interesting to see how the pieces are connected from a business/startup perspective.</comment>


Why is Silicon Valley so 'tone deaf' to India? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/11/marc-andreessens-colonialism-tweet-silicon-valley-facebook-india <comment><USER2> "Sharma saw it as part of a broader issue of homogeneity in Silicon Valley, a region run by a narrow set of oligarchs who famously eschew hiring women or people of color."

Hyperbole much?. Silicon Valley has plenty of women and 'people of color', especially from India.

India still has a caste system, which makes it nearly impossible for anyone from a lower caste to become successful.

I have plenty of friends that were forced to escape this system because if they didn't, it would mean a lifetime of poverty.

On top of this, the level of corruption is so high in most government institutions, it scares most investors. This corruption is keeping the caste system in place.

Were they better with colonialism? Perhaps not, but the current system sure isn't doing much for the people of India.

</comment><comment><USER3> They are tone deaf to the U.S. too.

After all the financial system dumped huge amounts of money into oil development, and then the oil producers outdid themselves and now predictably the cost of oil is down.

Other than Google offering Google Fiber in a few markets, which has inspired GPON offerings from many other providers, SV companies rarely take up the cause of improving internet access in the United States such as modernizing the telecom system to put fiber or equivalent (pretty much) everywhere.

It's a predictable investment although it would pay off over time and somehow I am sure S.V. people would get richer because of it, but they don't want to rock the boat with the telecoms...</comment>


Ask HN: The DAO hack – Where does the real money go? - <AUTHOR> I am a complete newbie when it comes to crypto currency and the current DAO hack is something that I haven't yet fully understood. From what I have read so far, someone hacked TheDAO which is a crypto currency based program and made away with some amounts of "ether" which then translate to X amounts of real money ($$).<p>How does the culprit encash that amount or rather where does it really end up? In some (real money) account(s)? Or does it stay as crypto currency which can then be used to buy stuff (online)? And there's no way to track how a particular account/address ended up with that much worth of currency? <comment><USER2> This was answered in the comments of the link sent previously, but basically: it's gone to a public blockchain address, of which everyone knows the public key but only its owner knows the private one. Also, the blockchain is pseudonymous, so nobody knows who the owner of the address is.

Therefore, everyone knows where the ether are, but only its owner can touch it. He can use them as if they were legitimately obtained (they are, depending on perspective) and go to an exchange to buy dollars (or euros or whatever), or exchange them with other addresses for goods and services.

Anyone will be able to audit these movements of money (at least the ones that stay inside the ether blockchain), although there exist some cryptocurrency laundering schemes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here is what exactly happened [https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4os7l5/the_big_th...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4os7l5/the_big_thedao_heist_faq/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't claim to be the smartest of software developers, but I have been around in software development for more than a decade and I have been able to grasp most of the technical articles that I read out of curiosity. But I have to admit, the past few days I have read a bunch of articles around this, including this one, which try to make it simpler to understand, but I still don't have a grasp of the basic concepts around this :) Makes me wonder, are there enough people out there, who really know how this works and how to develop for such applications.

<comment><USER3> I hope this podcast helps...[https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/lets-talk- bitcoin-297-...](https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/lets-talk- bitcoin-297-the-death-of-thedao-part-one)

please let me know if it does/doesn't

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't believe any gold was involved.

<comment><USER5> lol if you think that gold has any real value

<comment><USER6> If you can sell it,then it has value

<comment><USER7> To be pedantic, economists use the word value in a specific way. It is how much you can gain or benefit from something.

Price is what you can sell something for.

So gold has both value (you can use it as a commodity), and it has a price (you can sell it in exchange for currency).

Worth is another one: it's a mostly subjective, philosophical judgement.

So technically, I could sell something that has no value; and something which has no agreed upon price can have value. Everyone can then disagree about what that something is worth.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Gamerspath is looking for a technical co-founder - <AUTHOR> http://dennisbuizert.tumblr.com/post/4213518060/gamerspath-lf-co-founder-technical

<comment><USER2> _As we are based in the Netherlands and plan on staying here unless something enables us to do otherwise, we are looking for someone who is also able and willing to move here or is able to move with us to a desired location._

I am surprised so many new tech companies make this a requirement, I have built several companies over the last decade that had distributed teams and it is now easier than ever to do so. With a tool a simple a Skype it is no different than being right next door to an associate. I say that as 10 of my developer are on Skype now and are located throughout North America.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a fair point you are making. It makes it easier now then ever to work on a long distance.

But, nothing beats a face-to-face. Never meeting your employees in real life simply because they live in a different country could create 1)tension 2)legal difficulties 3)communication difficulties (i.e. timezone differences)

Also if he/she is committed to make our business work, then why wouldn't they be committed to make the move with or to us? Another way of determining if they are a fit.

Yet, this is my personal opinion and like I said to some degree I agree with yours. Also this is my first business and I am still learning a lot. And this might be one of those learning curves. Determining whether the distance is/could be an issue.

<comment><USER2> Sure, it was not meant as a critique of your preference, I was more or less pondering out loud why more people don't do it. I have had just as much success with a distributed team as I have had with a central team. I was really just wondering if it is fear of the unknown that keeps people from doing it or if it is a negative experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> For me it is the unknown as it is my serious attempt to start a business. But, if we would find someone on a long distance and it would work great, who are we to say move here.

It is something me and my co-founder talked about a good hour. As we are both new to this. :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Digg's New DUI.Stream and MXHR - <AUTHOR> http://blog.digg.com/?p=621

<comment><USER2> Interesting idea, attempting to crunch all of the requests for a page snippet into a single request. Why do it in Javascript, though?

It seems like you'd be better off with a pre-processor server-side to inline include CSS, Javascript and images, then send the resulting page back for rendering. Javascript isn't nearly as fast as my C++-based templating engine...

edit to add: Also, don't discount the big savings you can get from "302 Not Modified" return statuses, especially on big chunks of content like images. The DUI.Stream image demo they had would get smoked by the 'dumb' version if they allowed the browser to cache the digg dude.

<comment><USER3> I suspect there's not much to gain by caching images in the browser: If you're looking at a page full of comments with hundreds of avatars, chances are the next page is going to make you load hundreds more that you haven't seen already: There is a very large number of commenters, and you probably won't see the same people on every page.

The demo is right: they ask for 300 different images (as in, different URLs), and their packager makes it faster.

Also, how would you inline include images? Using base 64 in the image tag?

<comment><USER2> The demo is pretty unfair. If you want to package lots of the same image, you just use it and let cache control do its job. If you want to package lots of different images, you should use a big sprite (again, server-side packaging without any js). If you want to make image loading look slow, do what they did in the demo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> what advantage does this have over using something like keep-alive? <http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/keepalive.html>

Keep alive, to me, seems better as you don't have to modify the frontend architecture. Turn it on at the server and let the server and browser do the hard work.

<comment><USER5> Keep alive maintains a persistent connection, you are still limited by the number of concurrent connections to the server and the latency that each one experiences.

MHXR bundles all your requests into one. This leads to savings the latency overhead on each request (& probably some server resources not having to deal with multiple connections too).

I tell you what; piping binary data into objects? Genius! I had no idea that was possible.

<comment><USER4> yeah, my understanding was that the overhead of a request is significantly less than the overhead of establishing a connection. So by using keepalive/persistent connections, you get the majority of the savings. All the headers and data for each file still have to get sent over the wire in the digg solution anyway, and the concurrent connections limit is the same in both cases.

But thanks for explaining, I see the latency particularly is an issue.

<comment><USER6> I found this interesting tidbit on the HAProxy page:

Keep-alive was invented to reduce CPU usage on servers when CPUs were 100 times slower. But what is not said is that persistent connections consume a lot of memory while not being usable by anybody except the client who openned them. Today in 2009, CPUs are very cheap and memory is still limited to a few gigabytes by the architecture or the price. If a site needs keep-alive, there is a real problem. Highly loaded sites often disable keep-alive to support the maximum number of simultaneous clients. The real downside of not having keep- alive is a slightly increased latency to fetch objects. Browsers double the number of concurrent connections on non-keepalive sites to compensate for this.

Don't know if it's true or not, but it doesn't take much thought to realize if someone wanted to DDOS a server they would use persistent connections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Unless I'm reading their demo wrong, their technique makes the page load slower (for me anyway): <http://demos.digg.com/stream/streamDemo.html>

Normal is consistently under 100ms and MXHR is around 400ms (using Safari 4 beta, OS X)

<comment><USER8> I get the same thing with the text version. I refreshed 20 times and only got 1 that was faster (and only 7ms to boot).

But if you try this in a non-IE browser: <http://demos.digg.com/stream/imageDemo.html>

The image demo performs amazingly well! I wish there was a timer for that one but its extremely fast.

<comment><USER8> CORRECTION TO THIS BY AUTHOR: There is a timer, it just waits until all the normal images load (and I was too lazy to wait). Upon refreshing, the MXHR stream was 10.3x faster on my FF.

<comment><USER7> Hmm, I tried 10-20 times and MXHR was always slower. Sometimes a full half- second slower. I had some times approaching 1-second load time, meanwhile the "normal" load was consistently between 350-400ms.

I know it's just a proof of concept and yes, YMMV, but couldn't they come up with a demo that clearly showed this new technology they invented was worth using?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Did you figure out how they're transforming the serialized image data into real images? I remember there was something like a data-attribute in the img- tag back in the days, but i thought it was deprecated years ago...?

Any hints?

<comment> a-priori It looks like they do it by replacing the image tags in the DOM with an object tag pointing to a "data:" uri containing the Base64-encoded image data. Here's two pieces of relevant code, first where they fire off the listeners for the DOM objects, and second where they replace the DOM objects:

[http://github.com/digg/stream/blob/66dcce320c73b109cd5836e44...](http://github.com/digg/stream/blob/66dcce320c73b109cd5836e44ca2163c235906dd/js/Stream.js#L222)

[http://github.com/digg/stream/blob/23a411eb0cc00048bbb090889...](http://github.com/digg/stream/blob/23a411eb0cc00048bbb09088937ab556c5cebe26/imageDemo.html#L40)

<comment><USER6> I don't think they're replacing any objects.

Every time a Content-Type of image/gif is encountered it appends a new object to #stream with the image data inlined. I was really confused at the object tags at first, so I went ahead and copy pasted one of the object tags with image data into a blank html and loaded it into firefox. The image showed up fine.

This is an extremely clever solution. I know jQuery UI's icons are in one giant image file and background offsets are used to display the correct icon, but this is probably better for a dynamic solution because the amount of CPU it would take to stitch upwards of 100 images together.

<comment><USER10> that's called a sprite, that giant jquery ui file with multiple images, in case you want to find more info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hmm, this goes some way to making up for the diggbar.</comment>


Systems programming in pulseaudio: untagged unions, fs races, edge cases, and docs - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/straylark/25d041c071707b151f7e74acd6bbb599 <comment><USER2> Part of what this fights against is the daemonization fallacy. At initialization, before it even looks at its command-line arguments, the program closes almost all of its open file descriptors. Then it tries to use the /dev/fd/N name passed in as an argument by the shell's process substitution, which is of course now closed.

The waiting and killing in the shell script is fighting the daemonization fallacy, too. Luckily, _that_ part of the program can be turned off with --daemonize=no. Even the pulseaudio people themselves do this.

* [https://github.com/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/blob/24928d6b6fa1cd...](https://github.com/pulseaudio/pulseaudio/blob/24928d6b6fa1cde3312bcf63e4e14d7003aadc69/src/daemon/systemd/user/pulseaudio.service.in#L22)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not my submission, but why remove "bad" from the title? We're not allowed to express a negative sentiment anymore? Don't want to hurt someone's feelings?

It's a confusing title in this form. Sounds like it will be a lesson in how to do systems programming, but it's really a complaint about a bad experience with some systems programming. Let the title say what the thing is.

</comment><comment><USER4> PulseAudio emulation for ALSA - [https://github.com/i-rinat/apulse](https://github.com/i-rinat/apulse)

</comment><comment><USER5> You can buy USB sound 'cards' for less than a dollar. I find the premise of this article kind of unconvincing.</comment>


The Best Bike Lock - <AUTHOR> http://thesweethome.com/reviews/best-bike-lock/ <comment><USER2> Interestingly the lock they recommend seems to have some pretty bad reviews on Amazon, with diagrams showing how the thieves defeated it: [http://www.amazon.com/Kryptonite-Kryptolok-Standard- Bicycle-...](http://www.amazon.com/Kryptonite-Kryptolok-Standard-Bicycle- FlexFrame/product- reviews/B005YPK8G2/ref=cm_cr_dp_qt_hist_one?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addOneStar&showViewpoints=0)

<comment><USER3> That twisted lock picture can only be done if the bike is improperly locked or the thief was willing to destroy part of the bike while stealing it. (Or it was an unusually talented thief.)

If you have your frame, at least one wheel and a secure post (preferably 3" thick) going through your lock leverage attacks become very difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hmmm.. I don't buy bikes anymore.

Bought two in Tel Aviv (after the one I brought from DE was stolen...). The first one was stolen, secured with a 'secure' Kryptonite U-Lock in my backyard. Brought the second back to Germany, after carrying it into my 2nd story flat in TLV every single day and only using it during the day, keeping it in sight.

Stored it in the (shared between 6 tenants) private garage/car park back in Germany, locked with a U-Lock from Kryptonite. Gone one day.

Got a (crap!) bike as a present from my parents. Kept it in the (2 party, single car) garage of my current plage, with a U-Lock from Kryptonite. Gone.

If you cannot/won't carry it in your apartment, don't bother. That's the lesson I learned at least. That also means that you cannot use a bike as a means of transportation if you want to go to a bar, watch a movie or something.

It's hyperbole, but I sometimes think that the 'Wild West' way of treating horse thieves could and should be adopted...

<comment><USER5> Hm, I've been riding bikes as my main transportation for a while; so far none have been stolen (the most expensive bike I'm willing to lock up where I can't see it was about $700 new). I lock it up at restaurants, symphonies, etc. in areas ranging from downtown to residential, including some areas with high petty crime rates.

Maybe your location has an unusual amount of bike theft, or maybe you've just gotten unlucky. Or maybe I've gotten unusually lucky! But even if I expect to get one $700 bike stolen per year, I'm going to save a _significant_ amount of money over maintaining/owning/fueling/insuring a car.

I will say that so far I've never locked up a bike overnight--bringing it into my apartment has always seemed like the normal thing to do.

<comment><USER4> Location: I didn't name all the places, but I'm talking about Tel Aviv, Cologne and Bochum in those cases - 'big' cities (TLV and Bochum aren't, really. Cologne crossed 1mil again I think). Given that I rule out the location or I just happen to hit bad locations, consistently.

Savings: That might make sense. For me each bike had a value beyond the money. I picked it, really liked it. I was in a rage each time I lost it. Plus, in Cologne and Bochum I'm issued a company car. No fuel, no maintenance, no .. bike. Sad, but easier. Similar to your argument: The cost of a bike is significant if the alternative is 'free'.

Apartment: Did that in TLV, as I stated. Afterwards I got kids. I don't have a "do not touch" area anymore, if we ignore a couple servers and gadgets. Storing a bike in my apartment isn't an option right now.

(I _loved_ my bike in TLV. Stayed for one year, rode to work every single day - I think there were max. 2 occasions where I used the bus for some reason. Now I'm certain that I cannot protect a bike, so I won't invest in one. Thieves completely destroyed my fun here.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The only bike I've had stolen was a $600 hybrid that I bought when I first moved to Boston. I parked it in the same place every day the entire summer at a T station. Cops found shattered pieces from my U-lock and told me the thief used liquid nitrogen.

<comment><USER7> In Cambridge, liquid nitrogen cheaper than milk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is slightly off topic, but why aren't folding bikes or scooters more popular? Their folding mechanism allows you to take them with you which would presumably prevent theft more than a lock. If a bike lock is the only thing that's keeping your bike from being stolen it doesn't seem like it'll work more than it just delays the inevitable.

Plus aren't locks really inconvenient to carry around with you? 10+ pounds is a lot when your bike is only 20lbs.

<comment><USER9> I say this as a proud Brompton owner, but to most people they're just weird. They're also a bit more expensive, you get less bike for a given amount. They're not that light. I often lock mine up outside because I don't want to a haul a 26 lb block up a flight of stairs.

No lock weighs 10 lb (you can read the article), and 20 lb is a pretty light bike. 3 lb lock for a 25 lb bike is more realistic (my roommate's 56 cm aluminum road bike is 26 lb).

<comment><USER10> Even 3 lb vs 25 lb is the wrong comparison. Why does the weight of the bike matters? What matters is the total weight the rider has to move - which is something like 25 lb for the bike, 20 lb for a bag, and 200 lb for the rider themself. 3 lb is peanuts on that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The best bike lock I ever had was a crappy bike. When I was in college, I did not have much money so I bought a used bike. It had a 3 speed Stermy Archer shifter that did not work right, you had to set it in just the right place or it would not work, the pedals will slip. I never locked it I just left the shifter in the wrong place. A couple of times I would notice my bike laying on the ground a few feet from where I left it, I always hoped that someone tried to steal it, the pedals slipped on them and they landed their crotch on the cross bar.

<comment><USER12> Sounds like your Sturmey Archer worked just fine. The most common older model had a position between normal and high gear where the driver was disengaged from the hub, and there were stories of crashses due to slipping out of gear while honking up a hill.

I have those old hubs on a couple of my bikes.

Quite agreed about getting a crappy bike. A bike can be quite ride-able yet still look crummy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> A friend of mine used a good U-lock and still had his bike stolen. The thief used a portable plasma cutter in broad daylight. This was in SF.

<comment><USER14> >This was in SF.

Sounds about right. A friend of mine had theirs stolen from their front yard, broad daylight, by some people with a van.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> In fact, even top notch locks can not resist a seasoned lockpicker. Here the kryptonite new york lasts less than a minute : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYv4uq_eML8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYv4uq_eML8)

</comment><comment><USER16> I raced Cat 2 for many years with a carbon fiber Specialized Epic Allez with all Dura Ace & Campy C-record components back in the early 90's while going to university. The bike cost roughly $2,700 & I used it nearly every day to commute. Not once did I ever lock it up anywhere. When I'd get to class or wherever I was going I would remove both the wheels & lock them to the rack. This whole process took seconds for removal & assembly with the quick releases. I'd then cary the frame like a bag. At a bit over 14 pounds it wasn't an issue to just take it with me. At one point I even had a clip to attach it to my backpack. It sat quite nicely next to me at my desk, even in lecture halls & was never really a problem. Only once in four years did a university security guard ask me to take it outside and lock it up. I asked why and he said: "university policy doesn't allow bikes in the building." I responded that it wasn't a bike. It was a frame and would only be a bike when assembled with wheels which it wasn't when in the building. He of course thought I was being a smart ass and escalated the situation to a supervisor who told him to back off. I honestly had more run-ins with business owners who didn't like the fact I was wearing cleated shoes on their polished floors.

At the end of the day, I'd like to understand, I really would. Why do people lock bikes they care about on the street? Is it simply a function of not knowing how to use quick releases to pop the wheels off? Is it a space issue? I lived in some pretty tiny places but there was always wall space & toothpaste was always perfect for covering the holes for the bike wall rack when I moved out. Never once did I loose a security deposit.

<comment><USER17> Your approach requires a large up-front investment, especially for a student. Lugging a heavy frame around isn't practical, and many would find it hard to justify $2,700 for a carbon-fibre bike; I struggled to scrape together £280 for a bike this Christmas (the cheapest aluminium one I found).

Whilst it's sensible to keep them indoors at home, that's no guarantee; I've had a bike stolen from inside my house.

My bikes seem to last ~1.5 years, so I chose new bike under that assumption. For your bike's $2,700 I can get ~6 of my current bike, or about 9 years worth.

<comment> Flip-per I recommend buying second-hand bikes instead of cheap new ones. If you (or a friend) know a bit about bikes you easily get better quality for lower prices.

<comment><USER18> Thus the circle continues.

<comment><USER19> Because the whole used bike market is theft? Please, that's just an irresponsible assertion...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The last few "best bike lock" articles I've seen were frustrating; weird "unpickable" key systems[0], or integrating the lock _into_ the bike frame so breaking the lock breaks the bike[1]. Gimmicks come and go and it's how we find new tech, but pragmatic real world tested results are what I want in systems I really don't want to fail.

This one's a good lock, but I've had one for 6 years and I'll buy another when it breaks so I'm biased.

[0] - [http://gizmodo.com/heres-how-you-pick-the-unpickable-bike- lo...](http://gizmodo.com/heres-how-you-pick-the-unpickable-bike- lock-1589949074) [1] - [http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo- way/2014/08/22/342437221/com...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo- way/2014/08/22/342437221/coming-soon-to-a-pole-near-you-a-bike-that-locks- itself)

</comment><comment><USER20> 10 months old reddit thread [http://www.reddit.com/r/MTB/comments/1yozc4/bike_thiefs_opin...](http://www.reddit.com/r/MTB/comments/1yozc4/bike_thiefs_opinions_on_bike_locks/)

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder what they think of a lock like this as secondary protection or as a replacement for the cable:

[http://www.amazon.com/ABUS-Amparo-4850-Frame- Lock/dp/B001BAD...](http://www.amazon.com/ABUS-Amparo-4850-Frame- Lock/dp/B001BADNRA/)

It's permanently attached to rear fork and slides around to immobilize the rear wheel. Of course, you wouldn't want to use it alone - you'd want a U lock around the front wheel/frame/object as well.

This combo is what I was given for a city bike in europe, and it's painless to use - you just turn the key and slide it through the rear spokes, and the way it's attached it's hard to cut without removing it from the frame first, unless you don't mind damaging the bike or wheel.

</comment><comment><USER22> It is worth mentioning that you shouldn't lock a bike around the seat tube. A thief can cut the frame tubing much easier than the lock, disguise the break by covering it with a u-lock carrying clamp and still have a ridable bike to sell.

</comment><comment><USER23> Someone please make these bike parking structures [1] and put them everywhere. I would gladly pay to park my bike in one of these knowing it's secure, and not having to carry a heavy lock around everywhere.

also, please improve upon the design [2]

[https://www.bicibox.cat/default.aspx](https://www.bicibox.cat/default.aspx) [1]

[http://www.lavanguardia.mobi/slowdevice/local/20120802/54332...](http://www.lavanguardia.mobi/slowdevice/local/20120802/54332500393/usuarios- bicibox-agresiones-estaciones.html) [2]

</comment><comment><USER24> If you really care, get the fancier lock (Kryptonite Fuhgettaboutit ([http://www.amazon.com/Kryptonite-997986-Black- Fahgettaboudit...](http://www.amazon.com/Kryptonite-997986-Black- Fahgettaboudit-U- Lock/dp/B000OZ9VLU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420932077&sr=8-1\))) they recommend and buy locking skewers. Then don't buy a new bike, but get a mid-80s steel bike and call it a day. I've left bikes locked up in the worst neighborhoods in SF overnight and haven't had shit stolen.

</comment><comment><USER25> I used to use u-locks back in the day, but these days all bike shops in Amsterdam recommend chain (8mm), so that's what I use: [http://www.hollandse- bakfietsen.nl/wp-content/uploads/2012/0...](http://www.hollandse- bakfietsen.nl/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/kettingslot-super-blocca-100.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER26> I use the Kryptolock Series 2 to lock up my cyclocross bike (CrossRip) on campus, but the cable is annoying to carry around so I end up exposing the back wheel more so to theft.

Thicker locks only increase the time it takes for a thief to cut through, so I bring my bike inside if I don't plan on riding for a few days.

</comment><comment><USER27> Somewhat related: [http://seatylock.com](http://seatylock.com)

<comment><USER28> The design of this lock is fundamentally bad (too big, many weak joints), and the video shows the designers don't know about the somewhat famous Sheldon Brown method described in the article.

<comment><USER22> I used the Sheldon Brown method for a while. Nobody stole my bike but I gave up on it after getting a few broken spokes. A rigid lock resting on a relatively weak spoke is asking for trouble.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I had hoped it would somehow make it more dangerous for the thief or render the bike useless. The suggested model isn't going to do much but send the thief down to the next unsecured bike, which means if everybody does it we are no better of.

<comment><USER30> People tinker their websites to remove "friction".

Aren't bike locks just a way of adding a bit of friction?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've been blown away lately with these bike stories on HN. For some reason, I never imagined that "normal" people would spend $8,000 (and up!) on a bicycle. I guess living in a big city is not something that I really want to do.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm a big fan of the OnGuard Mini:

[http://amzn.com/B000FL3E8O](http://amzn.com/B000FL3E8O)

It's small (no leverage attacks), and reasonably light. I also leave a giant chain lock in the bike room of my building at work.

</comment><comment><USER33> This article reminds me of the time I went for a ride with a friend down by the coast. I hadn't bothered to bring my lock - I hadn't planned on stopping - and he wanted to grab chips.

He offered his lock for both our bikes and pulled out his "decent lock" he got for £8. Needless to say I volunteered to wait outside and guard the bikes.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is how you review bike locks.

<comment><USER35> > review lots of locks

> end up suggesting one that is flawed anyway.

<comment><USER36> No lock is perfect. You just need a lock that is better than the next guy's...

<comment><USER29> Nah, you need one filled with C4.

We used to hang horse theives no reason not to hang bike theives.</comment></comment></comment></comment>