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Interesting because the University of Chicago's Crime Lab does work like this to track the epidemic and virality of murder as it happens across Chicago. Worth a listen on an amazing podcast I highly recommend called Hidden Brain: https://www.npr.org/2017/02/21/512035150/on-the-knifes-edge-...

It would be more disconcerting if a majority of students were leaving these schools especially since they cost so much - many parents take their kids out of the normal school system or private school system as well. It's unfortunate that Max had to shut down these schools in NYC and Palo Alto, but it seems like they're actually making headway. We can interpret that "they aren't teaching students," but I learned the most from books on tape when I was reading as a kid and I know that's different from the lecture style of the past, but the experimentation is so paramount for success in these schools that perhaps those parents are just wrong.

My sister is a elementary school special ed teacher who teaches kids with learning disabilities and the amount of time she spends with parents is astounding even though I think she's amazing. I am glad someone is fighting the fight to help make her job easier and bring data and monitoring to make education better.

My cousin turned me on to the Jaybirds X2. He's now switching over to the Jabras - they're good because they're waterproof and if you're athletic. Once the airpods solve the problem of sweat and lots of movement (I'm a runner), then I'll definitely buy them. When I did have them, I was most impressed by the microphone which STILL no one has been able to get the best isolation on the microphone, but the Airpods are the best so far.

I'm an Overcast user who cranks it up to 3x+ speeds, minimizing silences and voice boosts. The experience is enhanced when you have earbuds (or some type of noise-cancelling). I also find that when I do it during an athletic activity like biking, I somehow can listen to more things probably because I'm doing something rote.

The real key to all this though is when someone finally creates this for online articles or books - sure, I could download a version, format change in calibre and then have it read to me via Voice Dream, but I need a better voice than the technical voices nowadays. I would definitely pay for this.

Lastly, this also occurs in other media for me - pretty much any movie before 1990 can be watched at 1.5X on VLC. Similarly, every YouTube clip is set to 2X usually as well. It may sound exhausting, but you just get used to it after a while.

In a way, you could probably determine a buffer time based on this calculation. Every single time there is a task switch, you should add on buffer of 23 minutes. Probably would make you do less tasks

Lasik - I had terrible eyesight (-12 in each eye) and I decided to get Lasik. It changed my life. Perhaps I was already going to be changing my life anyway, but it became a lot easier to go out for a run, workout, and be healthy. I don't have to worry about contacts late at night drying out.

Probably a close second might be my bluetooth Jaybird headphones (before it was sennheiser. The bluetooth cordless experience is amazing, they're waterproof (I sweat a lot when working out) and combined with Overcast, Audible, or Spotify - any situation has been vastly improved with audio. This by itself is how eons ago people would marvel at this ability once reserved for royalty.

Another reason to absolutely support places like Code.org and focus on computer literacy. If Silicon Valley continues to isolate itself and make its work seem like magic, then it'll always be at the whims of an uneducated populace and its institutions.

love this pet theory for things that are commodities

This line. The idea that diversity, strange, or abnormal may not be beneficial to society doesn't make sense. Innovation can literally be anywhere.

“By a quirk of chance Dr Imperato’s research was picked up by the American pharmaceutical giant, Merck. They used her discovery to create a drug called finasteride, which blocks the action of 5-α-reductase.

“It is now widely used to treat benign enlargement of the prostate and male pattern baldness. For which, I’m sure, many men are truly grateful.”

The thing I've realized is that my short attention span solves for all of these issues.

Congratulations! Outside of the hedonic or material treadmill, I strongly suggest you do something that you honestly enjoy for your community or for a cause you believe in. Lots of studies show that if you "give back" (in a way that you trust makes a real impact), you will lead a more fulfilling life. Also, it's fun to get back to trying to solve problems :D

Hi HN - I've been a member here for a while and just wanted to show off the latest thing we've built. It's as easy as rating an Uber/Lyft, you can now give anonymous star ratings on an internal meeting and give quick kudos or feedback ("Had Agenda, Started Late" etc.). We'll send a summary to the meeting organizer with what went well and what to improve. It's FREE on email/Slack but I'd love to get feedback and also send along to a friend of yours who experiences pain with their company's meeting culture.

Before I entered the tech space ten years ago, I had won some scholarships because all I wanted to do was public service either through the government or non-profits. For me volunteering was initially a way to increase the CAS credits (an IB requirement in high school), but eventually morphed into probably the BEST way to feel good and to recharge. I don't know what it is, but being community-focused activates something in the brain that is different from the more hedonistic side and helps re-center all my efforts at work. I'm weird I think though - most people don't actually care about helping the least among us and I can understand why. It's literally all cost, but somehow if you do it, you get this great sense of accomplishment and if you do it with friends, it's even better.

For me, the following volunteer activities are great: 1) Group activities, like building housing in the bay area - Habitat for Humanity cannot keep tech from at least literally building housing for San Francisco despite the local community not wanting us to. Other group activities include meal preparation, food bank help - I strongly suggest organizations like OneBrick

2) mentorship/tutoring - it's quite rewarding when you can teach someone something. You know that it'll live with them for a while and you've literally touched a human life

3) Donating - I know people hate this, but if you do it, it's probably more important than you just putting a little bit of your time.

In general, I think of volunteering as really a form of consumption actually which benefits society

It's interesting that the new thing that Dropbox, Box, and a bunch of enterprise companies are focusing on is the idea of automated workflows, smart data integration - turns out NO ONE wants the problem of PDFs, Excel spreadsheets, and integration with Salesforce - probably the same reason why there's so much focus on Cloud at Adobe. To be fair, ten years ago, the promise of the open web was supposed to solve all this... at least someone is moving into this direction. Congrats HelloSign team!

Two things to keep in mind:

1) Acushnet is trying to keep Costco from entering the market, but once Costco sells a significant number of its golf balls, Acushnet will have to deal with the economic ramifications.

2) Streisand effect - this lawsuit plays really well for Costco, namely that it gives them a lot of free publicity and hype around their supposedly amazing golf balls.

I had the opportunity to have lunch with a lead pollster at the Cook Political Report - I asked him whether he thought redistricting reform could decrease partisanship. He pointed to the Senate as a reason that partisanship still continues. The one thing that he said would make the biggest political impact might actual be open primary (top two vote getters move on to the general, regardless of party) - which would moderate folks. I'm still a believer in gerrymandering reform, but the tendrils of self-segregation run deep and gerrymandering reform is just one weapon against the hydra of partisanship.

I've thought a lot about this and the key is not just technology, but the ability to quickly automate the markets for the sale of water. In many cases, water is plentiful, it's just very hard to get it somewhere. Infrastructure combined with a way to automate water rights exchanges is a really important part of this equation.

I used to believe this was true and thought that Facebook comments was the end-game to these problems. Then I realized that there is a giant shift that occurs with people and the internet, because the crazy cruft that was being posted was still being posted, but now tied to a Facebook Identity.

I think this will likely be solved when human beings actually SEE others and see the reactions from others faces - thousands of years of evolution have honed this part of our social selves and that is what will be necessary to keep our less troll selves at bay.

Again, Peter Thiel was onto something: http://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/peter-thiel-young-blood.ht...

Fellow Colorado voter - really happy I voted on this, for your wife and for death with dignity.

Just wanted to echo the sentiments about having an investor/friend who sticks with you through the thick/thin. I think some investors are all about downside protection and it usually manifests in legal instruments that benefit the investor if anything goes wrong, but more importantly, you can tell by the way you're treated. It's rare that investors don't have the "game" change them. They start to focus on their returns, care only about a few number of winners (when in fact, writing the check is just the beginning to making sure you have an active winning investment). Lots of these investors completely forget why they are VCs in the first place.

When Esper was changing from an AI assistant company to a calendar analytics company, we went through one of these moments. Some investors were immature frantically trying to find an edge, while some others did everything in their power to help us transition. When things get tough, you realize who has grit.

I remember thinking that Garry was uncannily nice with us during this trying time (to be fair, I've known him since we were both founders and consider him one of my best friends in the bay area). He was always solutions oriented, introducing us to people, thinking through problems and just giving more of his and the Initialized team's time than probably we warranted. The reason why he was that way was because he cares about you (the founders and the team) to tackle a problem you care about. He would always say that when he started investing - "I'm just afraid of being a straight vampire" i.e. an investor who is just leeching off a growing beast.

In a weird way, he's the type of investor, similar to how PG describes great companies - they're kind of like non-profits. They just want to solve problems and it'll work out. That's probably the reason why he's done so well.

Anyway, respect him because he sure as hell respects you.

I'm guessing this means that Bret Terrill will be taking a bigger role working with Twitter, given that he just joined their board as well.

Very cool! Can you talk a little bit more about the stack? Did you guys use the stuff from Streak?

I can unequivocally say that as an employer we've hired people who are much older and re-trained because they were able to do the job. We're okay with people who have kids or are older, as long as they get the job done. If older people can't get the job done and a younger person can, then so be it.

First we start with birds, then we go back to their ancestors... :D

Since this only took down websites, it'll be interesting to see how this affects the price of bitcoin...

I find there is cognitive dissonance here for a lot of folks - I personally agree that fresh, natural ingredients are good, but at the same time I'll drink soylent. I don't know where I stand on all this because I am afraid that in future years, I'll find out that I have small intestine cancer because of all the soylent I drink, but at the same time - we SHOULD be able to understand how the body works and that all things are knowable. Would just love to get folks thoughts on this.

1) Testing PG's Top Ten Things That Kill Startups - co-founder problems, fundraising, etc.

2) Is this biggest mistake usually that people don't fire fast?

3) We know the unicorn growth rate - but what is the median/average growth rate for a semi-successful YC company?

4) What makes a company part of the walking dead?

5) What are the primary channels a lot of YC companies use for user acquisition? How has that changed?

6) What are the primary reasons for rejection for YC companies? Does it differ by partner or uniformly the same?

7) We know that airlines are hard. It'd be great to see what specific categories of startups that YC has funded that are just more difficult to grow in or are easier to get traction in - e.g. consumer v. enterprise, analytics, gaming/media?

8) In fact, I'd love to see a review of PG's claims in general either backed by data or refuted by data. I suspect they're backed by data, but it'll likely give more insight into the key area that people find interesting. For example, are more people now finally choosing NOT to go to grad school?

posted above, but it's different for Chinese speakers than English people with dyslexia: http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2014/09/dyslexia-chi...

Fun fact: Dyslexia in Chinese is anatomically different than Dyslexia in English - so you may be dyslexic in English, but function fine in Chinese: http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2014/09/dyslexia-chi...