How CMU increased number of women in CS from 7% to 37% [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~lblum/PAPERS/TransformingTheCulture.pdf <comment><USER2> So they increased female students by...

1\. Giving female students special benefits and privileges.

1.1. Access to Big Sister program.

1.2. Special female-only clubs.

1.3. Special favour in admissions.

1.4. Special favour in high school.

2\. Stopped evaluating new students on ability in computer science (which is based, like anything else, on experience) and started evaluating them on extracurriculars and intangibles.

Does this seem kind of fucked to anyone else? They basically threw merit out the window because they'd rather have diversity than talent. Are math programs going to start admitting people who have no experience or proven ability in math now, because those people do more charity work than math nerds? Are chemistry students going to be chosen for their leadership ability rather than scientific ability?

<comment><USER3> I don't think you understand how college admissions work. Students are generally accepted based on their overall academic record. Grades, SAT score, extracurriculars, etc.

Students are not accepted to CS programs because they've written a lot of prior code. I'm sure most incoming chemistry students have not spent time inside a lab outside of their high school chemistry class. College is where you specialize in a particular field so students are accepted based on their overall aptitude and not experience in a specific subject.

<comment><USER2> ... of course I understand how college admissions work. Do you assume that I am a total idiot or something? :)

 _"the Admissions Office began giving more weight to non-academic factors, looking for applicants with leadership potential and a commitment to "give back to the community." These broadened criteria also became important in awarding financial aid."_

They changed the weighting to emphasize intangibles such as charity and "leadership potential".

 _"He felt it was important to get the message out that "no prior programming experience is necessary" to enter the CMU computer science program."_

They changed the weighting to de-emphasize experience - which is the #1 correlate to ability.

 _"I'm sure most incoming chemistry students have not spent time inside a lab outside of their high school chemistry class."_

But if there _was_ a student who spent time outside the lab, they would give that student special consideration because of proven ability and interest in the field. It just so happens that the majority of CS students _are_ going to have experience outside the computer lab, because in this world everyone has their own computer. Most people don't have their own chemistry lab.

<comment><USER4> Experience does correlate strongly with _current_ ability, but it correlates much more weakly with _potential_ ability.

There's no college out there that requires "5 years prior job experience", because the relationship between college and student is very different than between employer and employee. Employers look for _current_ ability. Colleges, on the other hand, look for _future_ ability, the indicators of which are significantly more speculative.

<comment><USER5> There is at least one college which requires demonstrated skill (albeit not $N years of experience).

<http://www.juilliard.edu/admissions/entrance/index.html>

According to my mother (a musician) most music programs tend to require prior experience. The rationale is a stronger version of what forensic said: anyone serious about music would have already invested effort into learning how to play. The same could be easily said about CS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My university used a rather simple bait and switch trick with the degree names and changed the name of power engineering to a more friendly energy and environmental engineering.

It actually worked pretty well. There was a significant increase in female students and they didn't change to another degree later.

<comment><USER7> Hm, interesting. Maybe computer science needs a new hip name to increase enrollment. We could call it "Autonomous Human Sociology".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's only 6 pages, and clearly says:

" _The findings of this study have been well documented elsewhere and we will not go into details here._ "

The paper is a summary and synthesis of an entire project, see some of their publications here:

<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/gendergap/www/papers/>

Their approach is multi-pronged and involved:

1) Meticulous study of male and female CS students' attitudes towards computer science education. _"Funded by Sloan, the project consisted of hundreds of interviews with both male and female CS students about their histories with computing, interests, motivations and aspirations, reasons for majoring in CS, and their experiences in the undergraduate program. Conducted over a four-year period, the project was able to track many students throughout their time at Carnegie Mellon. By interviewing students once a semester._ "

2) Education of new teachers of Advanced Placement (AP) Exam for Computer Science in a teacher summer school and alerting them to the gender gap in computing. This summer school took place in CMU, and since it was addressing gender gap, CMU became some sort of Mecca for those who who care about women's involvement in computing.

3) Revamping of the admissions process. " _In addition to demonstrated academic competence, the Admissions Office began giving more weight to non- academic factors, looking for applicants with leadership potential and a commitment to "give back to the community." These broadened criteria also became important in awarding financial aid .. About the same time, Allan Fisher also conveyed to the Admissions Office his goal of a gender-balanced program. He felt it was important to get the message out that "no prior programming experience is necessary" to enter the CMU computer science program. The image of a CS student as someone (usually male) who has played with computers since early childhood is widespread. This often discourages many otherwise talented students from applying to a computer science program."

4) "_A Supportive Community: The Women@SCS Advisory Council: The Women@SCS Advisory Council was created in the fall of 1999 and has since met weekly during the academic year. Membership includes undergraduates representing all four years and graduate students representing the various departments within SCS*". 9

<comment><USER9> >> Admissions Office began giving more weight to non-academic factors, looking for applicants with leadership potential and a commitment to "give back to the community."

Oh, God! What is the plan? Train students in "leadership" and "networking", leave boring technical stuff to those nerds in India or China?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> According to their research, women started out with much less confidence but by the junior year it has started to level out when the classes become more difficult for both genders. See section "Gap Between Perceived and Actual Ability" and "Confidence Gap Narrows"

Also see "Geek Mythology: Lore about Being in CS" specifically "It is important to note that most of the CS students (both male and female) we interviewed feel they do not match the stereotype: their interests are varied (including sports, theater, poetry) and not isolated to computer science. "

[http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/gendergap/www/papers/si...](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/gendergap/www/papers/si..).

This paper expounds more on the view that a student must be absorbed in computers 24/7 and that women's perception is that they must be this way to succeed: [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/gendergap/www/papers/an...](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/gendergap/www/papers/an...but) men who are not like that still feel like they can be successful in computer science under "The Non-Hacker Male" from that paper.

Based on this information, I believe the stereotypes are self perpetuating and breaking the feedback loop will help a lot. I ask that you personally help by keeping an open mind.

</comment><comment><USER11> I tried to find out how, but there was too much filler to find the reason in under a few minutes.

<comment> barry-cotter A variety of things.

Discrimination against ubernerds _In addition to demonstrated academic competence, the Admissions Office began giving more weight to non-academic factors, looking for applicants with leadership potential and a commitment to give back to the community._

Mentoring Programme _The most extensive single activity of the Women@SCS Advisory Council has been the Big Sister/Little Sister program, which pairs upper-class and graduate students with firstyear and sophomore CS majors._

Changing emphasis/delivery of (introductory) courses _Even more, insights provided by the Council are likely to have profound impact on the curriculum. In her green paper circulated at a meeting with faculty, senior Ting-Chih Shih clearly pointed out that the current CS undergraduate curriculum serves male students far better than females. For one, the entry programming courses favor students with more experience (usually men) who seem to get better scores effortlessly As a result, many women begin thinking that learning computer science takes innate talent and no amount of hard work will pay off They start to lose confidence and forget their initial interest in computer science Moreover, the way lectures are presented seem to appeal to men more. In general, females feel that the birds-eye view of a problem, and the end result, are more relevant than the coding details in between_

<comment><USER12> >In general, females feel that the birds-eye view of a problem, and the end result, are more relevant than the coding details in between

Doesn't this suggest that men are more likely to be wired for programming?

<comment><USER13> Actually, doesn't that mean that women don't have what it takes to actually be a programmer? The devil is in the details, as they say.

Not stating a fact, just pointing out that in the context of a technical profession, that citation actually sounds derogatory.

<comment><USER14> Since when has dithering over details been recognized as a favorable trait in programmers? Also, that response was in the context of intro-level CS courses: so if you're fretting over the implementation details of glorified Hello World applications, instead of focusing on the overarching concepts , I'd be inclined to say you'd better change your ways or you _won't_ be a very good programmer.

<comment><USER13> I have three things to say about that:

1\. Not every CS graduate will work as a programmer. Many will work in other technical roles within the industry. Do not assume that CS knowledge is only appliable to programming. I graduated from a CS course and I'm currently a sysadmin, and having a CS degree makes me a better professional;

2\. Having little interest in the details is usually just common-speak for lack of technical skill. Having the skill/competence and lacking the interest is seldom found in the same person;

3\. It's the introductory classes that lay out the ways in which one faces every programming problem. Not paying attention to detail means allowing bad habits to root themselves. I still remember some of those "details" from my introductory classes to programming 12 years ago, and I frequently other people (otherwise experienced) commiting mistakes that I manage to avoid due to those "details".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The author says that retention is important but I didn't see anything about either retention or graduation rates. If the "extra" women aren't graduating at a reasonable rate, did admitting them do them any good? Or, is that the wrong question?

Looking at the numbers, we see a change from 89 men and 7 women (96 total) to 83 men and 49 women (132 total) enrolled.

Looking at admission rates shows us how it was done. The women's admission rates were basically unchanged, from 34% to 36%, so the increase in women admitted and enrolled is due almost entirely to the increase in applications by women. At the same time, the overall admission rates dropped from 26% to 12%. Since the population has only two components, men and women, and the rates for women were unchanged means that the admission rates for men dropped significantly.

I wonder what relationship the admissions criteria have to success in the program.

However, the numbers suggest another question. What about the guys who were displaced by women? (There were at least 6 and no men got any of the "expansion" slots.) They get the same benefits that the rest of us get from more women in CMU CS, but they "paid" more than the rest of us. ("But for" the decision to admit women on a different scale, they would have gotten in.) Shouldn't they be compensated?

</comment><comment><USER16> Sounds like the main thing they did was to emphasize that no previous programming experience was needed to study CS there.</comment>


Microsoft copied new Windows Package Manager from rival AppGet, claims developer - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/28/21272964/microsoft-winget-windows-package-manager-appget-copied <comment><USER2> The "Andrew" in question who courted Keivan (AppGet's dev) is Andrew Clinick. He wrote a blog post in response to this a few days ago:

[https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/winget-install- le...](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/winget-install-learning/)

Still seems pretty tone-deaf to me - obviously MS seems to be in the legal clear, but the moral high ground and lots of dev goodwill has been lost.

It also damages the ability for devs to informally meet and chat with PMs at larger companies everywhere - adds a lot of mistrust to the eco-system.

This is not that MS came up with their own package manager. It's the entire song-and-dance routine that was conducted about potentially hiring Keivan, and then ghosting the engineer whose open-source product you were simultaneously cloning.

Of course, people will forget, but many will still remember. This is still a net-negative all-around when it didn't need to be.

<comment><USER3> > It's the entire song-and-dance routine that was conducted about potentially > hiring Keivan, and then ghosting the engineer whose open-source product you > were simultaneously cloning.

AppGet is a fairly unoriginal open source product. Anyone can fork it and do what they want with it. Furthermore, if one doesn't copy code directly and simply uses a similar idea, the author of AppGet doesn't even have to be credited.

Did the author of Preact get flack like this for copying React? How about the authors of any other number of forks of other OSS products?

And just because you get interviewed doesn't mean you get the job. Everybody who has gone through rounds of interviews with large tech companies knows this.

People that share your opinion are thinking as if Microsoft is one person. HN largely subscribe to "cock-up before conspiracy" or Hanlon's Razor. So, why don't you explain to us how you think this Microsoft conspiracy went down? Do you really think people sat around a table discussing how to screw this one dev and steal his product that was already open source??

Please... some people from MS interviewed him, some other people from MS decided against hiring him and maybe some other people from MS used some ideas (some very common and not-original ideas) from his work. Big deal. Microsoft has ~150,000 employees.

> but the moral high ground [has been lost].

No it hasn't. Not even in the slightest degree IMO.

> and lots of dev goodwill has been lost.

Not sure how you're measuring that but people who read HN and r/programming are in the low percentage out of all devs worldwide. And out of those people that read about it - well you can see here that we don't all agree.

I mean even after the last 2 decades of Linux dominance and Mac desktop OSes - among other stats, Windows is still the number one desktop OS used by software developers according to the recent StackOverflow survey and C# is still one of the most popular languages and people are still using VSCode, TypeScript, GitHub, etc. The great majority of people generally don't even stop and think about things like privacy, security or the morality of big companies.

But there is no question of morality here anyway. I question the morality of Andrew for sharing his work and then acting like it's a crime to look at the shared work.

<comment><USER4> Finally, someone with a sensible opinion on this situation, other than the routine "read headline" write a bashful comment attacking large corporation without understanding the core issue (which obviously is getting mob downvoted without actually attempting to understand the scope of the issue). And as a matter of fact, manifests have been used by other package managers before, so since when did Kevian have a monopoly over this idea? It is remarkable how this has blown up and one-sided the narrative has been. MSFT, probably due to confidentiality, cannot divulge the outcome of the interview. Perhaps, he was extremely hard to communicate with in person with very strong views that don't mesh well in a MSFT team environment? Who knows, but just blindly listening the Kevian is disingenuous at most and dangerous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I read the author's initial blog post a few days ago, this part immediately stood out to me:

> I was told that the acqui-hire process through BizDev would take a very long > time. An alternative to speed up the process would be just to hire me with a > "bonus" and then work on migrating the code ownership after the fact. I > didn't have any objections, so we scheduled some meetings/interviews in > Redmond.

As someone who has worked in the acquisition/acquihire area, this immediately raises so many red flags. The team responsible for shipping the package manager obviously did not have the budget/exec sponsorship to purchase a rival. Not sure if security, legal, HR etc were even involved at all at that point, or had budgeted the time to assist with this.

Yes the acquisition process takes a long time, and that is _exactly_ to avoid situations like this one. The only correct response when a company reaches out to you for something like this is "cool, let me set up a meeting with my lawyer."

<comment><USER6> >The only correct response when a company reaches out to you for something like this is "cool, let me set up a meeting with my lawyer."

Or alternatively, choose not to respond at all as per PG's January 2015 essay "Don't Talk to Corporate Dev" [0]

>Distractions are the thing you can least afford in a startup. And conversations with corp dev are the worst sort of distraction, because as well as consuming your attention they undermine your morale. One of the tricks to surviving a grueling process is not to stop and think how tired you are. Instead you get into a sort of flow. Imagine what it would do to you if at mile 20 of a marathon, someone ran up beside you and said "You must feel really tired. Would you like to stop and take a rest?" Conversations with corp dev are like that but worse, because the suggestion of stopping gets combined in your mind with the imaginary high price you think they'll offer.

Being PG, he's focussed on startups, but it applies to any small business that might be the target of an acqui-hire.

[0] [http://www.paulgraham.com/corpdev.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/corpdev.html)

<comment><USER7> This is gold:

 _I remember once complaining to a friend at Google about some nasty trick their corp dev people had pulled on a YC startup._

 _" What happened to Don't be Evil?" I asked._

 _" I don't think corp dev got the memo," he replied._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I definitely agree he should have been credited more, and the communications strategy was cruel.

But he released his work, AppGet, under an Apache 2.0 license. Microsoft was free to copy it as long as they followed the terms of the license. That's one of the points of open source.

Microsoft also released their copy of it under the very open MIT license.

The article treats it like a crime, but this is essentially how it should work, right? One open-source project greatly advances the art, and another takes what was created and released freely, and runs with it.

If they literally copied code from AppGet, they may have an issue given that they didn't follow the Apache license terms precisely (at least, it doesn't look like it from a very brief glance at the WinGet repository -- Beigi's name doesn't appear to be in the Apache license notices). But that seems easily fixable.

<comment><USER7> I'm guessing you haven't read his post on this, because he's indeed _not_ upset about the copying, but about the credit: [https://keivan.io/the-day- appget-died/](https://keivan.io/the-day-appget-died/)

<comment><USER8> I actually had read his post. He's very justifiably upset about the lack of credit for AppGet and also the terrible communication, which I mentioned. I thought it was a well-written post.

But the linked Verge article frames it in terms of the copying being the problem, rather than the credit, even calling it Sherlocking. It's not.

<comment><USER7> I don't think it does? They mention "credit" at least 4 times in the article ("copy" comes up 3 times) and they're very clear that the issue is credit ("The announcement was especially bad given how little credit was given", "Beigi is mostly unhappy with how Microsoft didn't credit him for his work", etc.). I'm not sure how you read it to imply the crime is in the copying?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This came up recently: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23331287](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23331287)

</comment><comment><USER10> There are a lot of people from Microsoft on HN. Hopefully at least one of them will respond here, or even better, look into righting this wrong.

<comment><USER11> To be honest I think they're probably here, reading this, feeling bad about it, realising there's little they can do, so not saying anything.

Microsoft wrote the post acknowledging the copying, they know it was handled badly ... what else could they do at this point?

I hope their investigation finds out what went wrong. I might suspect it was:

\- averro being their usual rubbish selves and ghosting candidates. Microsoft needs to massively improve their hiring processes.

\- Clinick realising that the WinGet announcement should have credited AppGet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Been happening forever. When OS/2 was invented we met with them, talked about licensing some of their tech. Showed them our stuff including our 'Context Manager', an app that let a microcomputer manage several apps at once.

Fast forward 6 months - OS/2 had a Context Manager, looked and worked identically to ours. Sigh. What can you do? Good ideas are not patentable.

<comment><USER13> Hearing this, I vow to never use OS/2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> don't forget Microsoft like other organizations, are just a bunch of people, except that they have many more "bunches" than an average company.

The way I look at it this is just the acts of a few people and has nothing to do with overall movement of the entire company

<comment><USER15> > The way I look at it this is just the acts of a few people and has nothing > to do with overall movement of the entire company

True, but a company is nothing but the people they hire.

It therefore reflects poorly on Microsoft as a whole and will make people think twice about working for/with Microsoft in future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Never be a 'good' person when interacting with a corperation because even if the people you meet at this corpoation seem like nice humans they can not act as such. Even now after all this the dev decides not to carry on developing appget as it might result in fragmentation of the windows software ecosystem. So this guy is ACTUALLY making good long term decisions that help Microsoft. And then Microsoft release a statement saying "oh sorry - what did we do? we never meant to, we care, we reeaaaly do".

I don't know why this is acceptable. People need to realise that their first obligation is to be a good human, even if you are working for Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER4> Since when is using manifests a revolutionary idea? It's been used over a year in Julia for package management. IMO this whole thing blew out and feels like an unjustified mob mentality to attack MSFT over some trivial technology borrow. It also feels like we are not getting the full story, only Keivan's side, who is obviously trying to steer the narrative in one direction. For example, what actually happened in the interview?

</comment><comment><USER17> Embrace, copy, extinguish?

</comment><comment><USER18> Changing culture takes longer than making PR. sigh..

</comment><comment><USER19> Can you stop people from doing this ? From what I am aware even MIT license still needs to be credited somewhere in the new project.</comment>


"Why Does S Look Like F?": A Guide to Reading Very Old Books (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://theappendix.net/blog/2013/7/why-does-s-look-like-f-a-guide-to-reading-very-old-books <comment><USER2> The book linked to is a really interesting slice of 1680s culture.

Kathy: _" But they can't hide it [having sex] from God, who sees and knows all things"_

Frank: _" God who sees and knows all things will say nothing; besides, I cannot think leachery a sin, I am sure if Women govern'd the world and the Church as men do, you would soon find they would account fucking so lawful, as it should not be accounted a Misdemeanor."_

Kathy: _" I wonder men should be so rigorous against a thing they love so well."_

Frank: _" Only for fear of giving to much liberty to the Women, who else would challenge the same liberty with them, but in fine, we wink at one anothers faults, and do not think swiving a hainous sin, and were it not for fear of great Bellys, if it were possible swiving would be much more used then now it is."_

</comment><comment><USER3> The double s ligature starting with a long s is also where the modern german Scharfes S (ß) comes from: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9F](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9F)

I'm kind of surprised there's no mention of it since it's a perfect example of the long s still in use.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Last month, I came across a recently digitized book from 1680 with the innocuous-sounding title _The School of Venus_."

Funny. I read that title and assumed it was erotica.

Venus is the goddess of love. The title is also rather similar to one of the most famous pieces of erotic literature of all time, Anaïs Nin's _Delta of Venus_.

<comment><USER5> This sort of took me aback in the article; this is a relatively well-known piece of libertine literature for those who study early-modern lit/culture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As part of my History major I did a subject on Witchcraft in Europe, which involved a lot of primary texts from the early modern period. You certainly get faster the more you read, but I always did a double take when the text discussed the familiars (think black cats) "sucking their mistresses".

To go OT, the "witch's teat" was a superfluous nipple for feeding their satanic familiars, and was even used as evidence to convict some witches.

<comment><USER7> It gets even more fun if you go back to the medieval grimoires, like the Munich Manual. Medieval Latin is tricky in both orthography and its linguistic departures from classical Latin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've actually used the long S in a comment here on Hacker News before:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7300266](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7300266)

(It was in a quote from 1788.)

</comment><comment><USER9> I've always read it as F. How can you rule out the possibility that, before certain advances in dental technology [1], most people spoke with a lisp, so what you read is what would have actually been said? It's not like there are recordings or standardized international phonetic alphabets to record the sounds represented by the letters.

[1] I seem to remember George Washington's dentures a technological marvel of his day, or something.

</comment><comment><USER10> There are lots of ſ's and other slightly hard-to-read typesetting when reading papers from the Royal Society. It's freely-available and has some quaint gems: [https://royalsociety.org/news/2011/Royal-Society-journal- arc...](https://royalsociety.org/news/2011/Royal-Society-journal-archive-made- permanently-free-to-access/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Fun fact, the integral symbol is in fact this long S (as in 'sum' or 'ſum').

<comment><USER12> You would do well to heed Wikipedia's advice[0].

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

<comment><USER13> Ah sweet, those links give a much better explanation than the original article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The excerpt from "The School of Venus" in the article > _Coufin, I confefs my ignorance_

"Confefs" ? The old and the new in one word.

<comment><USER15> I think that was addressed by the author: '... the long S is that it occurs only in the middle of words, never at the beginning or end.'

<comment><USER16> "I ſleep, ſing and dance, and ſometimes ..."

My only problem with this article. The image contradicts what was written shortly thereafter, without explanation.

<comment><USER17> That small slip annoyed me too. Long s does not appear at the end of words or in capital letters (at least not that I can currently recall), which is why it would not appear in the title (the capital letter of "School" or the word-end form in "Venus"), but I believe it is the standard form at the start of words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Anything is readable"

Has anyone deciphered the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript) yet?

<comment><USER19> Obvious bait, but I'll bite.

You're equivocating. The letters of the Vonyich manuscript are readable, discrete, and consistent. They are not meaningful, however.

<comment><USER18> How do we know?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I can't even read my own handwriting.

<comment><USER21> I have been suffering from a bad handwriting my entire life. In school and uni I would always be afraid, that answers could not be decoded by the person grading the test.

I also thought that the resulting text looked ugly.

Recently I have started to consciously improve my handwriting with great results. The simplest most effective step was to treat every letter as a single entity (in contrast of slurring all letters together into one word).

Of course this takes a little more time, but I now can actually read the results, and I also think that it looks good from an aesthetic point of view. Now I am not afraid of writing christmas or birthday cards anymore (I even bought a fountain pen for this purpose).</comment></comment>


Undercover Cells: New Estimate of the Microbes Beneath the Continents - <AUTHOR> https://deepcarbon.net/index.php/undercover-cells-new-estimate-microbes-beneath-continents <comment><USER2> So the estimate is:

>200 to 600 octillion microbes (2 to 6x10^29 cells) live in the continental subsurface.

Ok, can you give me that in blue whales?

>These cells represent about four to 13 petagrams of carbon, (each petagram is about one billion tons, or more than five million blue whales), which is approximately four to 10 times less than earlier estimates.

Great.

<comment><USER3> Serious question: is "blue whales" a common informal unit for biomass?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think 'large animal that people are familiar with' is for science popularizing articles. Let's say it was less than a 10,000 blue whales, they might have wanted to calculate it in African Elephants.</comment></comment></comment>


Board Members - <AUTHOR> http://blog.samaltman.com/board-members <comment><USER2> I feel a bit foolish for asking, but what exactly do board members do?

Does each board member have one vote? I assume events (key hires, acquisitions, investments) are brought to the board for a vote, and need to pass with a majority. Is there ever a case where a single-founder could have multiple board seats? Do board members vote on product/marketing decisions?

<comment><USER3> Follow-on question: do the shareholders usually have the power to redraw the board? Say you own 60% of the company but only 1 of 3 board seats -- could you overrule the board members or fire them if you felt it necessary? Does the board ultimately answer to the shareholders?

I imagine that this equity and board seat distribution could easily happen with a solo founder.

<comment><USER4> Yes, the board is elected by the stockholders.

Absent an alternative structure, default corporate laws provide for the directors of a company with only one class of common stock to be elected by majority vote of the stockholders.

However, there are all sorts of alternative structures that can alter this default. For example, it is common in a VC-backed company that preferred stockholders are given the right to designate a specified number of board members. The right is usually laid out in the company's certificate of incorporation or a voting agreement among the stockholders.

Source: I am a startup attorney.

<comment><USER5> Do they get paid by shares or salary? I mean is it a viable alternative to having a "job"? I see many people around sitting on multiple boards of companies.

<comment><USER6> If you are a investor in the company you usally don't get paid, just your trip expenses.

If you are an external member, somebody strategic to the company, you get paid either by meeting or some shares. Usually all board members in public companies are paid with cash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is solid advice. I had one of my mentors put it a really elegent way : "Your board should consist of people who fix your weaknesses". Don't have a lot of business contacts? Get a board member who has a huge network. Lack marketing knowledge? Get a board member for that. In a lot of ways its like getting venture capital; wherein you should gather venture capital from experts in the domain you are trying to enter/execute in. Although Im not currently building a board my current venture, this is always one thing that I struggled to find information on: building a board. Maybe I should get a board member who knows how to make a great board...

</comment><comment><USER8> Strange article. Is this meant primarily for YC companies, or generally? Sounds like advice that's only applicable if you're dealing with very reputable top-tear investors.

My experience: Giving investors substantial control doesn't just give them an ability, it gives them a liability to their LPs. If something goes wrong in the startup, and everyone knows that the board members could have potentially taken drastic steps such as firing the founders to possibly prevent the bad situation, even if the possibility is very small, then that responsibility weighs heavily on the VCs. Giving them substantial control, gives them a big responsibility to fix problems and only a loaded gun with which to fix them.

Just a guess, Sam's advice seems like a classic type of VC advice - do riskier things, because although it will likely end up bad for you individually, we're well diversified and it increases expected value for our VC portfolio as a whole. Suppose that's a big part of the reason why he's the spokesman for YC now.

> Finally, board members stick with the company when things really go wrong, > in a way that advisors usually don't.

Nice choice of wording, they stick with the "company".

> As a side note, bad board members are disastrous. You should check > references thoroughly on someone before you let them join your board.

That sounds like more than just a little side note!

Here's the other side of the debate:

[http://www.paulgraham.com/control.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/control.html)

[http://blogs.wsj.com/accelerators/2013/06/17/steve-blank- don...](http://blogs.wsj.com/accelerators/2013/06/17/steve-blank-dont-give- away-your-board-seats/)

[http://venturehacks.com/articles/one-way- control](http://venturehacks.com/articles/one-way-control)

[http://venturehacks.com/articles/board- structure](http://venturehacks.com/articles/board-structure)

</comment><comment><USER9> I tend to think about this topic as an 'independence spectrum' where YCombinator seems to suggest your independence should be somewhere in the middle.

The spectrum is this:

Being an employee -> being a founder with no majority in the board of your own company -> being bootstrapped, full control

I remember when pg wrote the piece 'you weren't meant to have a boss' which was extremely heavily against 'being an employee', while this piece by Sam Altman seems to be against full control as an 'extreme case'. (For me it is not extreme at all, on the contrary, it is the most natural thing on earth, as natural as the examples in pg's piece about "you weren't meant to have a boss")

I symphathise with having full control, although I can see that you have to make compromises in life; (that's the reason I am an employee now, but at least I have full control in my side project :) )

<comment><USER10> I can't help but think that, even if YCombinator is the same it has always been, I honestly do not understand the culture they are trying to foster. Is it that you weren't meant to have a boss, or that smart investors make good bosses (have a whole group of them, even if it costs your company money). I have noticed the average programming chops of a YC founder has gone down a lot, and I thought that was a group core value, and remarkably close to mandatory.

I hope YC is both a financial success and changes the lives of the founders in the program for the better. But it isn't something I would apply for anymore. I feel like, as someone who wasn't popular in school, but loved lisp, I am no longer part of the in-group, because I don't have experience with Finance or Sales.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > It's a good idea to keep enough control so that investors can't fire you > (there are a lot of different ways to do this)

Such as?

<comment><USER12> Different classes of stock is the Google and FB way, IIRC.

[http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2012/02/01/at-facebook- governance...](http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2012/02/01/at-facebook-governance- zuckerberg/)

<comment><USER11> As I understand, Sam would rather that you not do what Zuckerberg has done. Zuckerberg can't just not be fired because of the things he's done in terms of how he has set up the governance structure, he can also acquire whatever company he wants, block sale of any part of Facebook, etc. with or without the support of the board. Sam, I think, does not want you to have this power. So the question still remains.

<comment><USER13> It's religious zeal verses rational waffling. If big Z is perfect forever, there's no issue at all. He will, by default, do whatever is best for his company in any circumstances. That approach can be amazing or howard hughes like.

On the other hand, you dilute power between an array of smart talented people. Any action requires consensus. In the best case, you get congress when passing a "think of the children" resolution. In the worst case, you get congress with pretty much any other piece of legislation.

<comment><USER14> For all of Howard Hughes unusual personality traits he was until the end a very good business man. It will be interesting to see if the big z gets close to Howard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like what Sam says here, but how would the founders know the new board member is the right fit for a particular startup..would you interview(if so how?) or ...? would love hear what Sam has to say about that.

<comment><USER8> Apparently YC has an internal "bad investor list", as well as a huge network of easily accessible founders who've dealt with the majority of the investors in the area before.

Presumably, us normal outsiders would have a tough time approaching this level of background checking. I wish something like this bad investor list could be done publicly too.

As for interviewing VCs as the primary method, that must be a joke. They're professional salesmen and always act like your best friend when you're signing. VCs mostly get to where they are for 2 reasons - great deal flow or great personal sales technique, mostly the later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The best alternative to a board is bootstrapping your company.

You likely do know better and can seek advice anytime you like, but giving up votes and your destiny is another story.

I'm sure some can be fantastic, of course, if you get the right mentor situation and they are well connected and sharp (and correct, believing in you, caring about you, not motivated by investment, etc...).

</comment><comment><USER17> the second someone tells me that there has been an incredible shift of power and they are no longer in control, my bullshit meter shoots up off the charts. especially coming from someone who is the one holding the purse strings.

can someone who is on the opposite side of the table from Sam Altman provide a counter example to this power shift? I'm interested in hearing both sides.

<comment><USER18> It's certainly true in most respects that founders have acquired increased leverage.

Mostly due to 1) a million dollars isn't what it was in 1995 2) since 2000 the Fed has been almost constantly pumping liquidity into the US economy, this has made capital far more readily available 3) it has become very cheap to develop and launch products; the cost to manage a million users has plunged over the last ten years 4) knowledge is far more widespread about the industry, practices, etc. among entrepreneurs 5) funding options, systems, networks, have become far more widespread

Today there are dozens of angel networks that are easy to access for tech startups, in basically every major city in the US. In 1995 that simply wasn't the case.

The further along you can develop your business, the greater leverage you have with venture capitalists. Today you need them more to accelerate growth than anything else.

The negative example, that I've been seeing a lot of lately, are very aggressive liquity preferences by VCs. Perhaps I'm just noticing it more, rather than the terms getting worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I often get asked "How many Board members is the right number?"

My standard response is that "an odd number is required, and 3 is too many."

That's the kickoff point for explaining that the right question isn't "How many?", it's "Who?" Who is right for your Board?

I agree with sama that an even number isn't usually an issue if it's the right people.

</comment><comment><USER20> whenever anyone mentions pg i think of paul gauguin

</comment><comment><USER21> I found it a bit odd that an article on great board members (advisors with teeth) was only reviewed by one person. While there was nothing groundbreaking or surprising in this helpful post, it would have been nice to see it reviewed by one or two other founders and board members, preferably from outside the direct YC family, since this talks in generalizations about what does and does not work.

EDIT: Of course, I do feel a bit spoiled asking for this, as so many of PG's and sama's essays do have a long list of reviewers at the end. And this is of course much less than an essay (which I like). I welcome counter-opinions :-)

</comment><comment><USER22> This post's title is a bit ambiguous. I originally thought it was a biography about Sam Altman as a YC board member or something and only stopped to actually read it after it got some more upvotes.

How about something like "Choosing Board Members for Startups"?</comment>


From farm to factory: the unstoppable rise of American chicken - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/17/from-farm-to-factory-the-unstoppable-rise-of-american-chicken <comment><USER2> I rarely purchase meat, maybe once every two years, but when I do I buy directly from a local farmer whose farm I can visit. I've bought whole beef this way, and the quality to price ratio was amazing. Grass fed, organically raised, humanely treated beef for ~$5.50/lb.

Granted, I had to buy hundreds of pounds of it, but I got all sorts of cuts, bones for broth, organs (tongue, heart, liver, etc.)

The process was surprisingly simple, and I wish more people knew it was an option. I'd be happy to outline what was involved for anyone curious.

I don't object to killing animals, but the way we raise them industrially is truly one of the horrors of our time.

After committing to only eating animals I could trace the provenance of, I rarely eat meat these days, perhaps once or twice a month I'll pull something from the freezer. The variety of vegetarian and vegan options has really exploded.

<comment><USER3> The way you procure meat is definitely the best way possible from an ethical point of view, and I wish it would be more widespread. Unfortunately, it is only accessible for the most privileged - for those who can upfront hundreds of dollars for the animal, have ample space for a freezer and can afford the electricity keeping it up.

We need to create a system that keeps up high animal care standards on one side - and has widespread accessibility across all classes of society. The alternative is that either we continue with meat grown in abhorrent conditions with all risks (bacterial contamination of meat, pathogens jumping species) and externalities (manure nitrogen runoffs, methane emissions, smell) associated or that only the elites will be able to have meat - something that far-right populists are already accusing left parties (such as the Greens in Germany) of already doing.

(Yes, lab grown meat is a thing, but it will probably be another two or three decades until I can eat a lab grown steak!)

<comment><USER4> $1000 for meat for a year doesn't require "the most privilege". It's certainly not what is stopping millions of people in the US.

<comment><USER3> Two thirds of all Americans don't have 1000$ in savings ([https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/86455/over-two-thirds- am...](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/86455/over-two-thirds-americans- have-less-1000-savings)), and of those that do have that amount available, most are in no way able to put down $1000 in one piece for meat.

It always comes down to the "Boots theory of socioeconomic unfairness" in the end. Most of the stuff we are talking about here is nowhere near practically applicable for the majority of the population.

<comment><USER5> I have plenty of savings, but about $300 in my savings account, the rest spread across checking and other accounts. I'd be counted amongst the "poor" in this poll due to that. Is there more data somewhere? The poll is often touted, but I wonder if it shows what you think, or just shows that savings accounts now days are mostly useless?

<comment><USER3> These polls are based on net assets, at least the German ones which show similarly disastrous results.

For what it's worth 40 million people i the US are facing eviction because they can't come up with something as essential as _rent_. This is how deep the social divide has become in the US.

<comment><USER5> Got links for US ones based on net assets? Would definitely clear up the situation one way or the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "If breast meat is worth two dollars a pound and dark meat is worth one > dollar, which would I rather have?"

Western countries are weird about this. Chicken breast, particularly the industrially produced Tyson broilers and their ilk, is bland, dry and tasteless. (There's an Anthony Bourdain quote which I can't find right now about chicken being what people who don't like food order in restaurants.)

In Asian countries "dark" meat is preferred and sells at a premium, because it actually has some texture and taste.

<comment><USER7> I think I found the Anthony Bourdain quote:

Like most other chefs I know, I'm amused when I hear people object to pork on nonreligious grounds. "Swine are filthy animals," they say. These people have obviously never visited a poultry farm. Chicken—America's favorite food—goes bad quickly; handled carelessly, it infects other foods with salmonella; and it bores the hell out of chefs. It occupies its ubiquitous place on menus as an option for customers who can't decide what they want to eat. Most chefs believe that supermarket chickens in this country are slimy and tasteless compared with European varieties.

from "Don't Eat Before Reading This", the essay which put him on the map as a writer.

[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1999/04/19/dont-eat- befor...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1999/04/19/dont-eat-before- reading-this)

<comment><USER8> Everybody that claims swine are filthy animals: that is absolutely not true.

They are filthy because they have to sleep in their own shit, because the farmer presses them together in such a small room that they literally cannot move without hitting each other.

If pigs are raised on an open field, they roll themselves in water to keep them clean multiple times per day. On the other hand cows roll themselves in their shit, even when provided with puddles of water...and are unable to clean themselves afterwards because they ain't gonna take a bath.

Source: me, my grandparents had a rather mid-large farm in Germany and tried to raise their stock as humane as possible.

They also tried to raise chicken in an open manner, but that's close to impossible because you would have to have a lot of bushes, puddles, mixed areas of grass, plants, and a lot of fences in between (so groups don't attack other groups) around the stable. Otherwise chicken won't leave the stable, even not when they get infected.

And the value of chicken stock is so low that it's a financial disaster if you would build up a healthy environment for them, even if you would own the land. They would just destroy the plants so regularly that you would have to replace the plants at least on a monthly basis to provide hideouts and shadow for them.

<comment><USER9> Pigs on alps keep themselves much cleaner than pigs in a sty[1].

Cattle use automatic brushes[2] when they're made available.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ww5nuVZnmc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ww5nuVZnmc)

also pigs: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD5fviQ_i3c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD5fviQ_i3c)

[1] Or at least the sort of stys which haven't been legal here for a long time. Ferkeln in austrian music videos are even cleaner, but on the other hand the farmer depicted is obviously also not in her daily outfit: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw-g6X8qob0&t=128](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw-g6X8qob0&t=128)

0:35 damn, that's a sweet New Holland...

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23474129](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23474129)

<comment><USER8> > Cattle use automatic brushes when they're made available.

Damn, that's actually a very nice idea. We didn't have those back then.

<comment><USER9> For poultry, what a former VC of mine tried to do was to have coops on wagons, moving them around his large-animal pastures on a semi-daily basis.

Looks like it's a thing here, too: [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobiles_Haltungssystem](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobiles_Haltungssystem)

FWIW, we only take "Freilandhaltung" eggs these days.

For Ländler-fans: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euIrO9spk2A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euIrO9spk2A)

<comment><USER10> In the US, it's called a chicken tractor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Two points worth noting:

1\. Factory farming breeds viruses -- one of the main reasons people have been saying "when, not if" about pandemics for decades. We happened to get a coronavirus this time, but factory farms will produce a flu pandemic soon enough if we don't stop them, which we can. Here are two videos by Dr. Michael Greger for background:

\- Pandemics: History & Prevention: [https://youtu.be/7_ppXSABYLY](https://youtu.be/7_ppXSABYLY)

\- Can we stop a future pandemic? Dr. Michael Greger M.D explains what's next: [https://youtu.be/N0pvR92XT30](https://youtu.be/N0pvR92XT30)

2\. We keep making markets more and more efficient and then lament when there's no resilience and small problems affect everyone everywhere. Redundancies and other inefficiencies aren't bad.

<comment><USER12> Viruses and antibiotic resistance as well

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> We live in farm country, so we talk and hypothesize about the future of food frequently. I'm inclined to think that we're going to see a lot more vegetarians in the US middle / upper middle class. I also have to wonder if we'll see a time where it is only the poor and the very rich who eat meat - the poor eating factory "meat" and the very rich eating traditionally raised / heritage / "organic" meat. We've cut way back on our meat consumption, because we wanted to actually know the origin of our food. At least in our circle of connections, it feels very much like there are a whole lot of vegetarians / infrequent meat eaters.

<comment><USER14> Meat substitutes have already become fashionable. They are already in fast food, which makes me doubt that cheap meat will even be food for poor people when emulating the educated middle class is less expensive than eating meat.

Vat-grown meat will have to do better than emulating cheap chicken. Endangered exotic species and ethical cannibalism will be tried. The Kardashians will license their DNA and everyman, for a reasonable price, can eat the rich.

<comment><USER15> I feel the risk from prions may put a swift end to any 'ethical cannibalism' ideas

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

<comment><USER16> Presumably vat-grown 'human' meat would be free of prion risk?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >Counterintuitively perhaps, the industrialisation of chicken led to far fewer choices when buying poultry.

This is actually a metaphor for what's happening in the computer industry currently.

</comment><comment><USER9> For context, the UK and US are currently negotiating a trade agreement which should cover, among other things, whether post-Brexit UK food safety laws will be relaxed in general, and specifically for chicken. The negotiations are currently on hold until after the elections in the latter jurisdiction, but once it's all completed and the terms made public, I'll get a chance to reevaluate my decision to call the UK "Airstrip One" due to its role within Oceania.

<comment><USER18> I don't forsee it having a major impact in the purchasing of raw meat (I think most supermarkets are on board with not selling it as most consumers don't want it). What'll be interesting/disturbing is how it's integrated into pre- prepared meals. That's where we'll feel it I suspect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Non organic chicken is one of the few foods I find to be really disturbingly cheap. .99 to $2/lb range for a living organism to have been fed, slaughtered, transported and marked up at retail is a little off putting.

<comment><USER20> It is designed to allow poor people to have meat. A modern miracle really.

I don't purchase it because I have enough money to buy chickens that been humanely raised. I believe this is a moral obligation if you can afford it. But I won't judge people who can't afford it to buy chickens raised this way. If my fortunes change I will be grateful I can still buy a chicken. While I'm not in that situation I will continue to consume free range, organic, "happy chickens" that only had 1 bad day.

<comment><USER21> I wonder about this too.it feels like the availability of cheap meat has a significant social.impact that I don't see discussed anywhere. If factory farmed meat was unavailable a significant section of society would only rarely be able to afford meat. Put another way, the availability of cheap meat disguises the true extent of poverty in this country

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "chicken harvest"

</comment><comment><USER23> This sort of extreme cruel exploitation of living beings with brains & feelings will be thought of in the future similarly to how we think about chattel slavery.. At least the next step in the industrialisation of meat should be a huge improvement - just growing brain-less muscles..

<comment><USER24> The reality is that most people don't care, or don't know enough to care, or don't care enough to know. Switching to a meatless diet isn't an insurmountable hurdle, it's just inconvenient. And even that small inconvenience isn't something most people want to bother with.

Similarly, on the human front, a Westerner deploying even a little cash in the poorest parts of the world can save hundreds of lives. But most people don't care. They have their lives to live, mouths to feed, their local homes and neighborhoods to take care of. Caring about the suffering of millions of strangers thousands of miles away, regardless of species, isn't something we're good at, or care much for.

BOCTAOE

<comment><USER25> While this is a fairly accurate explanation of why things are the way they are, it doesn't mean it can't ever change. We don't care in general sure, but the only hope we can have is that we care slightly more today than we did yesterday. Everyone in the spectrum of poverty hopefully has taken a positive step in this direction in the past few decades, and hopefully we continue and accelerate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> thats why the chicken outside US raised on small farms tastes 100x times better

<comment><USER27> Ahh European exceptionslism. I don't really buy into marketing and was extremely disappointed by the taste and quantity of food in the European countries I visited.

There were exceptions, but the food is generally bland, and one of these countries was Italy.

They really advertise the authenticity of ingredients, when they need to learn "salt, acid, sugar, msg, fat"

<comment><USER28> > but the food is generally bland,

Similar experience in the other direction. Food in LA was incredibly overseasoned and in particular drinks like lemonade were extremely sweet. After a while I got used to it/had dulled my sense of taste so that this tasted "normal" and European food "bland". Luckily after some time without American food my sense of taste returned to normal.</comment></comment></comment>


"RIP Good Times": Silicon Valley's Cuban Missile Crisis - <AUTHOR> http://daltoncaldwell.com/rip-good-times-a-perspective <comment><USER2> The issue isn't that Sequoia was wrong -- in fact, everything they said came to pass. It wasn't a quick recovery, and people spent less money on technical acquisitions. That didn't stop people from creating startups.

What the slide deck didn't account for is that there was nowhere for big money to put their money - everything was in trouble. So, people started to look for new opportunities, and Silicon Valley suddenly looked mighty attractive as a place for investment.

On Main Street, there are people who have been out of work for years now. It really was that bad, is that bad. We just happened to be under one of the few umbrellas in a storm.

<comment><USER3> You're talking in the past tense, like the situation is over. For all we know, it's just beginning.

> _"We just happened to be under one of the few umbrellas in a storm."_

It's not different there. It never is.

<comment><USER2> The first deluge is over. The economy isn't currently in freefall; rather, it is slowly growing. That doesn't mean the storm system has moved on and everything is sunny from here on out.

Further, an umbrella (sorry to extend a potentially leaky abstraction here) doesn't mean that you are immune to the storm. It just means that you deflect most of the rain around you.

But it's different for IT, much different. I was let go from multiple contracts, but the time I spent out of work was by choice, and I had two interviews a week the moment I put my resume out while friends in other sectors would have killed for even an interview. I was able to choose the job I wanted once I was willing to move out of my home city.

I don't have a star studded resume either, and I've seen mediocre and worse developers stay on because replacements couldn't be found.

It's different for IT, and programmers more specifically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dalton: I interviewed for an engineer position at Imeem a week before. I passed the interview & I was told that the offer letter was just waiting for your signature. It was delayed because you just had a baby.

Then days later, I saw the "RIP Good Times" presentation & I was told that the job offer was put on hold indefinitely. Weeks later, I read about the layoffs & the job was gone for good.

It was a blessing in disguise for me since I realized that I should learn a new language & framework (Python/Django) aside from .Net. Turned out well for me since there are more Python jobs than .Net in the area.

<comment><USER5> Yes, that all sounds about right. I am glad you think of it as a blessing.

Incidentally, all of the work I do now is Python/Django. The story of why we had a massive .NET codebase is a long story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The crisis is far from over and the financial systems are still in a Cuban Missile Crisis situation. Nothing has really improved since 2008 - other than the different governments pumping trillions of $ into the different markets. I think the crash of 2008 is a little taste of what's to come (that's at least what I am preparing for).

<comment><USER7> Would you care sharing what exactly are your preparations? I'm at a loss figuring what is a good way to prepare. I've moved some cash to the less troubled economies but, what else?

<comment><USER8> Non-cash economies would be my answer. Find business models that don't rely on consumers having access to money, unless you are providing necessities. Say said it best: when there's not enough cash available to satisfy desires, people find ways around it. If you can arrange to be that way, you can still profit.

As for investments, pick your index, close your eyes to the ups and downs and pray someone in government realizes that when people are willing to give you a negative real interest rate you should take their money and do something productive with it.

<comment><USER9> >Say said it best: when there's not enough cash available to satisfy desires, people find ways around it. If you can arrange to be that way, you can still profit.

The only way I'm able to interpret this as practical advice is "invest in the mafia". Unless you're talking about building up your personal skills - which, while good advice (if you can do something other people want then you'll never go hungry, no matter how bad the economy), doesn't really scale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So I just looked through the slide deck again, and it seems to me most of what was in there should be standard advice AT ALL TIMES. Don't spend money on things you don't need. Watch expenses. Build a profitable company. This should be the default rather than here's 10 million see how many users you can get maybe facebook or google will buy you.

</comment><comment><USER11> Dalton, I don't know if you remember this, but I used to a major imeem fanboy, wrote a personal blog (freshbreakfast dot com) to count the ways I loved imeem, the links for which I spammed to email@example.com.

Anyhow, I ended up becoming employee #2 at Ustream. So I was at that presentation, doing them a favor running a private live stream for the CEOs that couldn't make it. Not to sound creepy, but I observed for your reactions quite a bit at that Seqouia meeting, and I even introduced myself to you after the presentation. It's true, your mind seemed to be elsewhere, but you were still very kind.

And if that many full circles aren't enough for ya, today we're both trending on front page of Hacker News :-). This one's mine: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4080074>

<comment><USER5> Yes, I certainly do remember you. And I do remember you being there that day as well. I read the hypebot post this morning, didn't notice your name on the byline :)

<comment><USER11> :) Thanks man, means a lot coming from you. And great great post, really a privilege getting to peer into your thought process during a moment we nominally shared.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't buy it. The world used to let highly interconnected financial institutions fail and we had sharper, nastier recessions (we called them 'panics') but they were over sooner. I think that, much like the reaction to the WTC/Pentagon terror attacks was worse than the attacks, the panicky reaction - bailouts and stimulus - has been much worse than the problem they tried to fix.

<comment><USER13> You should read Alan Blinder about "The Great Moderation" -- recessions since the late 1970s have been shorter and shallower than their predecessors. And far shorter and shallower than their counterparts under the gold standard in the 19th century. Also empirically, the reason the United States is doing better than Europe is because of the stimulus/bailout. It might be hard to think of the United States as a success story since it is only a relative one, but look at the much more dire situation in countries like Britain and Greece and Spain where governments were forced or choose to embrace austerity.

There is no reason the world cannot produce the same amount of goods as it was producing in 2007 - there are more rather than less people willing to work and the cost of borrowing money is very low. The only big outside constraint is energy costs, which are being offset by some fairly amazing reductions in the prices of alternative energy, including solar power.

So why the mess? The problem is a classic liquidity trap, a preference of investors for highly-liquid and safe assets that results in less money being spent in the private sector. This is visible in the way the borrowing rates of the Federal Government have fallen despite the best efforts of the Republican Party to drum up a debt scare the moment it fell from power and stopped spending the money itself.

Bailing out the banks did somewhat stabilize the banking system and probably prevented catastrophe. What remains necessary is getting out of the liquidity trap, which means increasing the amount of spending in the private sector. One way to do this would be having the government borrow at essentially zero cost and invest that money in public infrastructure projects which offer a return on investment. Another approach would be having the Federal Reserve declare an inflation target of 4% until the economic crisis is over. This would reduce the expected ROI from parking money in Treasuries and provide a greater incentive for firms to make private sector investments instead of just parking cash in the bank.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, well, I suppose I should admit don't buy the classic liquidity trap theory either. If you put a dollar into T-bills, you drive the interest rate a little lower, which causes, say, 70 cents of other investors' money to leave in disgust. Where do they go? To other assets.

And it's only 70 cents only because the suppliers of new debt, the US authorities, are sensitive to interest rates too. Investors can, net, only buy as much debt as the government is issuing, right? So if the Federal authorities are so worried about a liquidity trap, let them limit their debt issuance! If they do that, then your dollar put into Treasury securities means a dollar worth of other investors' leaving. No more liquidity trap. (At least as far as "highly-liquid and safe assets" == US govt debt. They could find other safe and liquid harbors, perhaps Japanese govt debt.) But the Feds aren't doing that, thus, I think that "having the government borrow at essentially zero cost and invest that money in public infrastructure projects" would in fact be bad for real wealth and prosperity because that borrowing brings some more money to T-bills and away from other investments, some of which would be private investments, for example. Of course if those projects are needed on their merits, not as make-work, then great, do them.

The same is true of your example of "parking cash in the bank". Parking cash in the bank means making investments. Where does the bank put it? They invest it. A bank is not a destination for money, it's a conduit.

<comment><USER13> I think I agree with you and am not sure where the disagreement is. Save possibly two points:

(1) Limiting debt issuance would only be expansionary if it didn't imply a reduction in government spending. And financing growth by expanding the money supply is a perfectly acceptable Keynesian solution. If this led to inflation and rising interest rates that would suggest the economy is no longer in a liquidity trap and the Fed could step in to rein in inflation while the government could go back to raising money on the bond markets.

(2) I'm under the impression that US banks reduced lending following the 2008 bailout. I seem to remember Andrew Ross Sorkin making this case, but either way - I don't think the best solution to the present crisis is a 20 year process of watching the banking sector delever as in Japan! Better to have controlled failures to wipe out debt and reduce moral hazard while making sure the economy is primed with the demand to deal with the fallout. How exactly to do that is a good question.

<comment><USER12> I mean I think there's no such thing as a liquidity trap, so I believe we disagree on that at least.

Regarding your point #2, yes I agree. But bailing banks out is exactly what Japan did. The certainty of regulatory capture by banks makes it better to just remove the government ability to bail them out. Let them fail. A moderate approach would be to limit bank mergers - too big to fail is too big.

<comment><USER13> Asserting that an economy is in a liquidity trap is equivalent to asserting that increasing the money supply will not drive up inflation or interest rates in the short term, but will drive employment and GDP growth.

I don't think it makes sense to argue that this situation is not theoretically possible since it appears to describe reality quite well. That said, the policy commitment that comes out of accepting even the possibility that we may be in a liquidity trap should be uncontroversial regardless of whether you believe the model is a close approximation of reality or not: push aggregate demand until there is some evidence it is driving up inflation and interest rates, at which point the theory says to stop because more of the same won't do any better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "...the US financial system was literally melting down."

Really? The financial system was becoming a pool of molten goo, possibly spreading radiation all over its vacinity?

<comment><USER15> Even intelligent people that know the meaning of the word will make this mistake when writing casually. The English language would be much better off if we removed the word "literally" from it. Or, I suppose, if we all just decided to accept that "literally" now means "metaphorically".

In which case, please kill me.

<comment><USER16> If it's a "mistake", then it's one that has been made for 300 years:

[http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2005/11/the...](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2005/11/the_word_we_love_to_hate.html)

Relevant excerpt:

'As is often the case, though, such "abuses" have a long and esteemed history in English. The ground was not especially sticky in Little Women when Louisa May Alcott wrote that "the land literally flowed with milk and honey," nor was Tom Sawyer turning somersaults on piles of money when Twain described him as "literally rolling in wealth," [...more...] Such examples are easily come by, even in the works of the authors we are often told to emulate.'

Given the caliber of authors that have used "literally" for emphasis, I have a hard time standing behind the concept that it's even poor style. We can decide that, moving forward, we'd like to clean up English and use "literally" differently, but calling it a mistake rather than a offense to modern style is inaccurate.

REGARDLESS, I thought this was exactly the kind of thread that Hacker News hated. :|

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "I remember getting an email from Sequoia asking for my personal presence (ie don't send a VP in your place) to some sort vaguely positioned mandatory meeting."

By what mechanism can an investor in a firm, presumably an investor with less than 50% equity, make attendance at a meeting mandatory for the CEO of said firm?

<comment><USER18> "Mandatory" is a surprisingly vague concept, even when used by people with real power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It would be awesome to see an update to each of the graphs in that presentation. Does anyone know if that exists?

</comment><comment><USER20> _> That being said, I am glad that presentation ended up being wrong, just as I am glad the Cuban Missile Crisis did not turn into a full-blown nuclear war._

The presentation wasn't wrong it was dead on. It's just that the massive Federal Reserve intervention and US Government stimulus prevented the worst.

Similar to Y2K - lots of noise was made about it, while thousands of engineers worked around the clock fixing it, so that when it finally happened it was a nonevent.

In both cases, people who accuse the warners of crying wolf after the fact seem oblivious to the scope and nature of the problem and the effort it took to fix.

Though in the case of the financial crisis, it's not fixed. The trillions of non-performing debt has simply been shifted from private to sovereign balance sheets, and the crisis continues.

Some or all of it will default eventually, there's no way around that. It's only a question of whether it's a managed, orderly, gradual default, or an acute chain reaction collapse.

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't fault your story or intentions, but this quote:

"That all sounds like bullshit to me. I was there, I looked in the partners' eyes, they weren't bluffing. They were trying to help us"

Really rings hollow with me. You may have believed you could stare into their soul to know their being, but these guys eat people like you for breakfast. You wouldn't see a knife to the back coming, so don't think you could look in their eyes and know they weren't bluffing.

</comment><comment><USER22> Interesting, and disturbing, that Sequoia only suggest reducing head count in the engineering department (slide 47).

<comment><USER23> I read that to include cuts to general and administrative expenses, as well as underperforming marketing and business development. I think engineering was at the top because it's the core asset, while products and other functions are less and less unique to a given firm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> VCs are similar to all other investors: they buy when it is high they sell when it is low.

BTW, whoever invested in or started social gaming and iOS companies during that time is golden now...

</comment><comment><USER25> In reference to Sequoia _possibly_ crying wolf.

In statistics there are 2 types of errors that one can make.

A Type 1 error is when you aggressively reject the status quo for change, even if the status quo was just fine (crying wolf!). A Type 2 error is aggressive rejection of change for the status quo, even though the status quo isn't right any longer (not crying wolf!).

There is no way to escape these errors, and depending on evidence, you'll sway one way or another (these errors always exist and are complementary in nature). The financial crisis looked like it _could_ blow up the world (there might be a wolf in the flock!). Assuming status quo - that nothing is happening (no wolf) - you might not prepare for it (a wolf), and if the world blew up you'd lose everything (wolf eats you!). Assuming change (hello wolf!), you prepare and adapt for the crisis where you have to lose a bit (growth/funding/employees sadly), but if it all goes down - you are prepared (wolf meet gun!).

This is an example of the precautionary principle at work, and based on my understanding, Sequoia did an outstanding job. The Federal Reserve also did a great job (during the crisis). I have no opinion about the lax rates in the lead up to the bubble - but I presume that was highly detrimental to our collective financial health! :D

Sequoia are the best in the business, they've been around the block a couple of times, and all they care about is making sure their companies survive. _RIP Good Times was prudent._

Better to cry wolf, than to not do so, and be eaten while you sleep.

When the cost/benefit balance changes, assume catastrophe, minimise chances of a Type 2 error (bias yourself towards change - a Type 1 error), and plan for the worst thing that you can possibly imagine - think of it like paying for insurance against storm damage if the data shows a few too many clouds over the Atlantic.

 _A false positive error, commonly called a "false alarm" is a result that indicates a given condition has been fulfilled, when it actually has not been fulfilled. In the case of "crying wolf" - the condition tested for was "is there a wolf near the herd?", the actual result was that there had not been a wolf near the herd. The shepherd wrongly indicated there was one, by calling "Wolf, wolf!"._

 _In terms of folk tales, an investigator may be "crying wolf" without a wolf in sight (raising a false alarm) (H0: no wolf)._

 _A false positive (with null hypothesis of health) in medicine causes unnecessary worry or treatment, while a false negative gives the patient the dangerous illusion of good health and the patient might not get an available treatment._ [1]

The future is very uncertain. Act accordingly.

Or as our ancestors would say:

 _If you hear any type of rustling in the bushes; always assume that it's a tiger trying to kill you. Temporary fear/worry is a good deal better than a permanent and painful death._

[1] - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors>

[2] - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle>

</comment><comment><USER26> The cold war continues (going with the missile crisis line), and it is thus the Fed is preparing for QE3.

I agree strongly with another comment: Sequoia was right, and then some.

Nothing actually got better, it's just that people think it did. A moment of respite from the turmoil is all the last two or three years represents. That moment of respite cost between $8 and $15 trillion depending on what you're counting (total deficits + Fed bailouts).

In fact, things are far worse today than they were at the height of the crisis, as we've loaded up on $6 or so trillion more in public debt we can never pay back. We've added about $400 to $500 billion more in student loan debt, and a few million college graduates are sitting on the sidelines without jobs and experience, and we've got millions more living on food stamps without jobs.

The only thing separating our system from absolute implosion is the global reserve currency that we're currently massively abusing at our leisure. If mortgage rates had to rise to their natural rates (absent Fed manipulation holding down both long term and short term rates), housing would quickly plunge another 1/3, and that alone would rupture the entire financial system and bring it to its knees.

The truth is, we look a lot like the imploding EU zone across the Federal and State levels. Except we've got the dollar, for now.

<comment><USER27> _cost between $8 and $15 trillion depending on what you're counting (total deficits + Fed bailouts)_

I always cringe when somebody calls the Fed's actions _bailouts_. These are asset purchases by the Fed versus injecting cash into the monetary system. The Fed will have to unwind these at some point in the future. But essentially, what the Fed has done is that it has made a market for securities nobody was willing to make a market for.

Net "bailout" performed by the Fed: zero. Actually that's wrong - the Fed added around $78 billion worth of profit via its open market operations to the Treasury last year (it's obliged to do so after deducting servicing costs/salaries etc.)

Pray, what are the "natural" mortgage rates you're talking about - ie you mean rates absent Fed intervention (via Operation Twist)? There _wouldn't_ be a mortgage rates market in existence if the Fed were not there to make one!

And no, you're not imploding like the EU. Their banks are woefully undercapitalized and can't lend to the corporate sector. Plus, they have one monetary policy and 17 different fiscal policies - that simply doesn't work!

Your banks and your corporate sector are flush with money. It's your consumers who are broke. Even then, they aren't broke - they are just not making long- term investments(ie purchasing durable goods) as credit has dried up and there is no good quality collateral left in the market against which people are willing to lend. Homes used to be the collateral earlier on - but that's no longer the case.

That's what the Fed is trying to do - lower mortgage rates (ie assume credit risk on your behalf - it can do so because it can print money - inflation is not a risk in this economy) to enable credit to flow in the economy so that the consumer can start becoming active again.

Deleveraging is painful - but it's not the end of the world as you've portrayed it.

Edit: fixed typos

<comment><USER26> The Fed's actions were extreme bailouts. They've been busy bailing out almost everybody: home owners, Wall Street, Europe, the Treasury, the states.

Net bailouts performed by the Fed: trillions

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans- un...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed- to-congress-gave-banks-13-billion-in-income.html)

They gave banks and others at least $7.7 trillion and there is zero proof that it was paid back. Citi had at least a $1 trillion blackhole on their balance sheet, and there is no possibility they were able to fill it. Bank of America was in the same situation, and their profits could never fill that. The Fed took over trillions in toxic waste mortgages to bail out the banks, and most of those 'assets' still sit on the Fed's balance sheet.

I'm sure the money supply continuing to skyrocket means the Fed isn't bailing anybody out. Surely those trillions aren't going toward bailouts for the government, Wall St, big banks, or the housing market.

<http://www.shadowstats.com/charts/monetary-base-money-supply>

The Fed is currently bailing out the US Government by buying 95% of all long term govt paper. The US Treasury has been bailing out California among other states, by using the Fed money. The US Government is completely insolvent without the Fed bailouts, it would have to slash 1/3 of all spending just to correct the imbalances in the system if the Fed stopped the QE programs.

The Fed is bailing out home owners, investors, realtors 24/7 using trillions in QE to push rates lower to prop up the housing market.

The Fed is pushing risk into equities and out of paper by driving rates down, which is providing a bailout to big institutional investors by keeping the stock market artificially high.

It's a bailout bonanza.

Natural mortgage rates would be the mortgage rates you'd get when you remove all Federal Reserve manipulation of short and long term rates. That is, when they stop all QE / monetization programs that are designed to specifically hold rates down, thus we have sub 4% 30 year mortgage rates.

It would be something closer to a historical norm, 6% to 8% would be a lot closer to normal based on the last 50 years, than 4%, for example. But if you know anything about any of this, you already know that.

<comment><USER27> Bernanke had to do a lecture series (as part of a PR-initiative, I assume - but he's an academician as well) explaining the Fed's actions to those who may not be that well-versed with macroeconomics or how the FOMC works. You should read this before making any "bailout" claims:

[http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/files/bernanke- lect...](http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/files/bernanke-lecture- four-20120329.pdf)

Edit: The lecture series in full for those who might be interested: <http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/lectures/about.htm>

It made very insightful viewing/reading even for us who are involved in the financial markets.

<comment><USER28> Appeals to authority... check.

Courtiers reply... check.

Dismissive passive aggressive attitude... check.

Good job, you hit 'em all.

[http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttrend...](http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttrends.htm)

Good luck unwinding that, kids. And that's just what they are telling us.

<comment><USER27> The various Feds' open market operations and reverse repo operations inject/sterilize billions of dollars every day from the markets. $3 trillion may seem like a big amount on the balance sheet to unwind - but that kind of liquidity can be soaked out of the system pretty easily (if done carefully) once the economy gets going and the Fed is able to raise rates (ie secondary credit markets begin to function well enough - e.g. the traditional GSE- sponsored lending/commercial-paper lending etc).

Edit: I am trying to make a valid clarification in this thread. Your sarcasm is unwarranted.

<comment><USER28> _shrug_

Again, that's only what they are telling us about. Pulling a couple trillion out of the economy is going to absolutely taco it (that's thousands of those billions you mention) since we are effectively an infinitely leveraged fractional reserve system now, even ignoring derivatives.

I'd be more sympathetic to your pat-us-on-the-head attitude if the mainline economists had been right about anything for the past decade. There's a whole slew of economists who actually got the debt crisis _correct_ and might be worth looking into, starting with Steve Keen.

The federal reserve has been hiding it's destruction of the average person's purchasing power behind academic rhetoric and obfuscation for over 100 years now, with the aid and abetment of the economic mainstream and the financial world. Don't assume that because we don't agree with you we don't understand what you are saying. We just don't believe it.

<comment><USER29> As a neutral third party who has no strong opinion about this issue and limited background, photon137 is making the much stronger (and informative) case.

Not sure if your goal is to have an impact on people like me WRT this issue, but if so, you're probably having the opposite impact you intend to.

<comment><USER30> Strongly disagree. photon137 is just copy-pasting the conventional wisdom into a comments thread and calling it a grand insight. Yet the deference afforded these "experts" is vastly disproportionate to the rate at which economics produces testable hypotheses. There is no such thing as a "right-wing" and a "left-wing" Nobelist in physics, but there is in economics. You quote Krugman, we quote Hayek, you quote Stiglitz, we quote Friedman, and so it goes.

Which is why this plot is so important:

[http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/sites/www.intellectualtak...](http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/sites/www.intellectualtakeout.org/files/bernteinromerupdated.jpg)

If Bernanke and Obama actually knew what they were doing, there would be a close correspondence between theory and reality. There isn't. It's very rare that these folks actually make concrete predictions that are tested in the future. So let's make some predictions. You and photon137 can make some, and then we will make some.

<comment><USER29> You strongly disagree that photon137 sounds more reasoned and compelling to me?

You're welcome to disagree, but I'll be happy to tell you flat out you're wrong.

My point was about the impact of their respective statements, not the content.

<comment><USER30> Fantastic. All I care about is the content. In any case, your comment was no simple personal testimonial, but an attempt to tell carsongross that the "crowd was against him". This is just the conventional wisdom attack again.

That is not the case anymore. The crowd is not against him.

It's too bad that pg has hidden upvote totals, as the bien pensants who support the bailout policies of Bush, Bernanke[1], and Obama would realize that millions of informed people now oppose them. To be an informed person, it is no longer sufficient to parrot what is read in the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal.

[1] Ben Bernanke, Bush appointee.

<comment><USER29> My comment wasn't an attempt to tell carsongross the crowd was against him. It was an attempt to tell carsongross that the way he's phrasing his arguments will make people think he's a crank.

I'm telling him what he can do to _convince people like me_ of his arguments, assuming that's his goal. If not, well, mea culpa.

You're falling into the same trap. "bien pensants?" Really, help me understand or sod off. Compare this response to photo317's polite, civil, and reasoned reply.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Just What Were Donald Trump's Ties to the Mob? (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-mob-organized-crime-213910 <comment><USER2> One could almost draw a parallel with mob bosses trying to screw over Trump to the Democrats trying to screw him over.</comment>


JavaScript Unit Testing Frameworks: Comparing Jasmine, Mocha, AVA, Tape and Jest - <AUTHOR> https://raygun.com/blog/javascript-unit-testing-frameworks <comment><USER2> TLDR; Any of them works.

Kinda shitty comparison IMHO. Sorry for saying this, but it wasn't especially detailed more than hunches and feelings of the author with some vague descriptions.

I don't have anything against that if it's done with some more table-styled hard facts but when it's all mooshy-mooshy and very little hard data it's difficult to bring anything out of the article.</comment>


Apply to seventh batch of Hacker School - <AUTHOR> https://www.hackerschool.com/apply

<comment><USER2> I am flagging this.

I am flagging this precisely because I believe the Hacker School experience is valuable and yet you offer a sexist and discriminatory grant to women.

Hacker School is valuable due to the experiences, the education, and the networking opportunities.

 _Do you offer scholarships for living expenses? We offer a limited number of $5,000 need-based grants for women to do Hacker School. You can apply for a grant simply by checking the box that you need financial assistance on our application form._

It is within your rights to offer this grant. But I see no reason why your sexist bullshit should be advertised without complaint at Hacker News.

Would you feel comfortable offering such a sexist grant to men only?

Do you feel comfortable about traditional "old boys networks", the existence of such were one valid reason that women's groups protested men's only clubs, men's only dining rooms, etc.?

They why do you perpetuate sexism within the industry?

Either your students need financial aid or they don't.

I have a similar aged nephew and a niece that would benefit from Hacker School, but you will only enable one of these people to attend. That's sexism, and that's not the fault of patriarchy, nor the fault of male engineers, that's Hacker School bullshit.

So I flagged this.

<comment><USER3> That was an abuse of flagging. It's fine (though boring after a while) to complain about links to sites whose policies you disagree with, but not to flag them as offtopic.

<comment><USER2> Well my apologies then, and thank you for the clarification on the flagging policy. I do seem to note my ability to flag stories seems to have vanished if only temporarily....

I don't understand why you think it's boring for participants to complain about policies they dislike about the organizations that post here. Especially when those policies relate to hackers, hackers and society, or even just our roles as citizens in society.

I think this is one way how awareness is raised, and changed effected, and I think it's especially valuable on forums like this one, that are widely read and respected throughout the industry.

Personally, I would like to see Etsy offer grants to people in need, regardless of sex or gender. I think that's every bit as much an issue for Hackers as women's status in hackerdom, or whether Ubuntu has gone too far this time.

What would be more boring is a policy of don't say anything out of fear of being controversial on Hacker News.

<comment><USER4> I don't think pg meant it was boring for people to complain about policies they don't like. He seems to have meant it was boring for people to complain about _linking_ to sites that they don't like. I don't think you actually did that directly, but you did say you flagged it, which could be construed the same way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> saiko-chriskun how many applicants does hacker school actually get?

<comment><USER5> (Hacker School founder here)

It's varied a good amount by batch, but for our past couple batches, we've gotten a few hundred. That said, I don't think looking at raw numbers is particularly useful, because many (most?) of the people we say no to fall into one of these categories:

* the applicant says he/she wants something very different from what Hacker School is (e.g., a highly structured curriculum, some sort of "startup school", etc)

* the applicant has never programmed before (we don't require much programming experience, but you need to have coded enough to know if you actually enjoy it. See: <https://www.hackerschool.com/faq#faq-how-much-experience>)

* the applicant doesn't appear to actually like programming

* the applicant didn't take the application seriously, or provided little to no information in the application

If you have a clear idea of what Hacker School is and you're a smart and friendly person who enjoys programming (whether you've been programming for two months or ten years) and want to get dramatically better, your odds of getting in are pretty high.

I hope this helps!

 _Edited to fix formatting_

<comment> saiko-chriskun awesome thanks :). I really want to apply one of these days, just need the money and time to get out to new york for three months hehe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would probably like participating in something like this, but it's not really an option being on-site. Seems like it's geared towards students on summer leave, and not those who may already have a job or other obligations.

<comment><USER7> I quit my software engineer job to attend Hacker School (Fall 2012). Undoubtedly the best decision I have made in the last 3 + years.

I am now once again working as a software engineer, and would not trade those 3 months at HS for anything.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the anecdote! I may actually consider it.

<comment><USER7> Awesome! I'm happy to go on at (much) further length about why it's so awesome and why you and any hacker absolutely should consider it.

Feel free to shoot me an email @gmail.com if you have any questions!

<comment><USER6> Sent it off! Hopefully I guessed right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> hey this hackerschool looks pretty cool. I see that their is a checkbox for "I am a woman" though. I am a high school-er that goes to vocational school for software engineering. I also happen to be a girl. I'm not so sure about putting a checkbox of "I'm a woman". It might turn that group away and I don't even like the idea of it too much. I'd rather have people see me more than just a gender.

<comment><USER9> Would it make you more comfortable to have it just be a radio button for M|F?* Did you read through the FAQ or play with the checkbox enough to realise that they ask this because they have scholarships that are only available to women? Or are you uncomfortable with the concept of affirmative action in general?

(Possible fix: have a checkbox 'I am eligible for a scholarship and would like to apply for one'. Automatically reject from the school anyone who turns out to have checked this without being eligible.)

*ignoring any possible issues with presenting gender as binary there

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've been reading too much HN. For a good 4 second my brain interpreted Apply as made up app-maker startup domain name type thing. App.ly!

</comment><comment><USER11> I laughed at the I'm a women checkbox.

</comment><comment><USER12> Those who want something like hacker school but can't attend it should shoot me an email. I know of a program that is online only and is very similar.

<comment><USER13> Like this? <http://www.gotealeaf.com> (disclaimer, I'm an instructor)

<comment><USER12> I can't comment on that particular option. But it does resemble the format. Dunno in terms of cost because the link you provide does not mention it. If you could share that information then it would allow others to compare.

<comment><USER13> It's in the FAQ section.</comment></comment></comment></comment>