Comment by bobf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bobf | Hacker News Reader

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I thought pg's comment on "naughtiness" was interesting, as I was tempted to use a shorter version of the story I'll relate below in response to the "hacked" question, as it was a very recent experience. I ultimately shied away from using it as my answer, as I thought it might be a little socially unacceptable ("naughty").

At Startup School, there was a line of several hundred people waiting for lunch, which consisted of a dozen or so different kinds of pizza stacked in piles of 7-10 boxes each. We had a group of 3-4 people, looked at the line, and someone said, "This line is ridiculous. How can we hack this system?" Someone suggested going somewhere else on campus to eat, but we wanted to stay and mingle. Someone else in the group knew people farther up in the line, and suggested skipping ahead in the line. Ultimately, I simply squeezed through near the front of the line, grabbed a whole box of pizza, and took it back for our group to share.

This kept our group from further clogging the line and seemed much more efficient than 3-4 of us waiting to select our 1-2 pieces each. Hopefully no hungry Startup School attendees were upset by our line hackery, as we thought it was a pretty win-win hack.

See, I think that's an example of the "bad hack" because it has the potential of damaging people, e.g. what if I was standing in that line for 15mins ahead of you and because you took that box of pizza, just when my turn comes the pizza runs out (you think it's unlikely? Then you haven't been to the wild world of college-student-after-event-pizza-eating).

My definition of a hack is to add value to the an existing system by modifying a property, not changing a zero-sum situation in your favor. for example, in your case, the number of pizzas are fixed, so it's a zero-sum situation. A better hack I usually propose in situations like this is to use both sides of the table, simple but generally people tend to pick pizza from one side only.

> My definition of a hack is to add value to the an existing system by modifying a property, not changing a zero-sum situation in your favor.

That seems like a nice definition of hack, but I don't think it's completely accurate. For example, if a college only accepts a certain number of people and you come up with clever way to get accepted, that's changing a zero-sum situation in your favor, and I would still call it a hack.

I agree, however, that the hack seems a little wrong. More clever would have been for the friends to grab another table, set it up opposite the original one with room for two lines, and then switch half the pizza boxes to the other table. (This works better than being on both sides of a single table because the way pizza boxes open typically blocks access from one side.) Another possibility would be to just grab a box each and carry it down the line offering pizza to everyone starting from the front.

I was at Startup School and did this hack as well (grabbing a pizza box) because it was obvious that there were plenty of other boxes to go around. It wouldn't work in a situation where there was a limited amount, like mentioned before, but it was a good hack for that specific situation.

Also, people who grabbed boxes often walked up the line and offered pizza. Hack + good deed.

For example, if a college only accepts a certain number of people and you come up with clever way to get accepted, that's changing a zero-sum situation in your favor, and I would still call it a hack.

It's not zero sum, though; if you're a genuinely better student than the student who didn't get accepted because you got his spot, it's you++, him--, university++, so still positive-sum.

There was a defined number of Startup School attendees, which means the amount of pizza needed is easily calculable (X participants * Y slices each.. maybe + Z "extra, just in case"). From hosting numerous events, I would definitely expect YC to have "how many pizzas do we need for X people" reasonably well figured out. I would think the greater danger is from people eating Y++++ slices each rather than a group of 3-4 sharing a box and having 1-2 slices each. As limedaring mentions below, we also handed out a few slices to others.

To your point of the "better hack", we advocated the "use both sides of the table" for breakfast, but with pizza it is unwieldly because the lids of pizza boxes only open one way. Yes, reconfiguring the tables would have also probably improved things.. but is much more difficult with 25-50 people trying to access the pizza boxes, and no readily available unused tables on hand.

Decentralized pizza distribution is definitely more efficient.

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