yo-mf

Seems like your comment got downvoted, which is a shame because it was one of the few comments that spoke to the heart of the matter. Ignore all the other real injustices around the restaurant business, but go nuts over a small guy and his crap website.

I would say however that his attempt at making the system better is not really doing that. He does come off as a lowly scalper with his implementation.

Actually OpenTable is loathed and I have worked at many restaurants that hated the fees, the crap software, and feeling they are forced to use it otherwise they would see a major dropoff in reservations. It should be noted that many of the hot and trendy places do not even use them because they are fortunate enough to not have to pay the "OpenTable tax" (their words from a number of folks). The only thing worse in the minds of most restaurant owners is Yelp. The "service" they provide truly is extortion.

Well, not really. There are plenty of equality movements that have been quite successful.

But the real point is that if we believe that jobs will be more technical in nature and that deeper knowledge of technology and coding will be required, maybe we should be concerned with the current ratio. Thus we not only create a skills divide, but one that grows into an economic divide as the better paying jobs are technology jobs. Maybe this is an "equality" movement worth putting some energy into.

Truly unfortunate all around. PG getting slammed from every direction. Jessica Lessin's new venture gets a black eye for shoddy journalistic standards. Lots of invective going around for what appears to be liberties of interpretation. And of all of this, I am not sure this really does anything to address the very serious topic on the imbalance of men to women in technology jobs.

The guy has an issue with the name Nokogiri?

Anyway, not to be "that guy", but this same article was posted over a year ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3577590 and the post itself is over two years old. Would it be too much to ask folks to search before posting?

Probably got his knowledge from watching a TED talk on the subject...

Plenty of "products" also do not have a business model. So code posted on Github that gets comments would be a product? Really sounds like you are quibbling.

The statement about "existing code" was ambiguous for a reason...

And no successful VC's blog...oh wait.

Obviously most "people" do not blog regularly. Whether it is CEO's of startups or chefs at top tier restaurants or whatever else you can think of. Does real questions is whether anyone have time for blogging? And the answer for the most part is no.

Yet a few people persist. People laughed at Fred Wilson when he started blogging. VC's mocked him. A decade later, every major VC started blogging and are falling over each other to start their own online entrepreneur magazine.

How is this to turn the question on Keith's head: founder CEO's that blog will in fact be a bigger deal and provide better "cost/benefit" than any other communications channel?

I once had a stellar wind, about near blew the doors out my house...

So you see, probably does not work so well.

I see what you did there...

Dear "That Guy", spot on.

Problems may arise when you send out a direct link to an article. When friends go directly to that article from the URL you provided, that could possible be setting off triggers. Better to just have people search for the post string or just direct to the "New" submissions and scroll down to article. This is only my suspicion, but it seems to be the case based on observations with submission behavior and article ranking.

Good point, though I just read it on mobile where is automatically shows as one page, something I find to be a smoother reading experience.

I think you misunderstand the state of VC nowadays. They are not about funding "innovation", they are about scaling already proven concepts. For example, look at all the dollars that have gotten funneled into ecommerce sites. That is not exactly groundbreaking.

I also think you underestimate what it takes to get a startup from a small niche business to one that can dominate a market. If you want a small business, then an accelerator (or seed funding) is not appropriate. If you want a high growth business however that could become a category killer, then an accelerator can help. Plus, there are plenty of site and apps that can show a little traction and a little revenue. But to turn that into a sustainable business is an entirely other matter.

That being said, there are some VC's and accelerators that are taking risks. It is just that the expectations have been raised across the board given how easy it is to get started and to launch an app or a website.

Wow, lazy parents...care to provide any metrics to back up that ludicrous assumption? The lazy parent excuse is what come out of the mouths of teachers to justify themselves and the status quo.

Having grown up in the inner city, there were plenty of parents that did not care, they were too busy wallowing in the despair of poverty. But there were plenty of other parents that fought to get their kids a better education and were stymied by a system that simply did not appreciate or care for feedback or parental participation. So those that could afford it sent their kids to Catholic schools, the only place left in NYC to ensure kids got a decent education. I was fortunate enough to be one of those kids, but my parents stretched to make the tuition. Today, it is even worse as parochial schools shut down and magnet schools are not able to meet the rising demand by parents fed up with the public options and desperate for alternatives.

This is not an honest debate. Obviously you are coming from one particular viewpoint and I am coming from another. Part of it might be political views and part might be personal interactions with the US educational system. I have children now in public school and can see how misaligned incentives have created a system that simply does not rewards quality.

As for bringing up Finland, that is a country that has less people than Chicago, a completely different culture, and a homogeneous population. What works there simply does not translate (just as the hagwons in Korea do not translate to the US). What does translate however is making quality the pinnacle for reshaping the US education system, something that oddly liberals resist. Instead they protect the unions and the status quo and that sounds like the camp you support.

And the irony is that a public school system that should be egalitarian is in fact ripe for many of the same abuses as a free market system. Yes, the farmer could move to Palo Alto so the children can go to a better school, but there is no way to pay the actual expense of living is said area. The public system also locks in students in a hopeless track of educational and financial poverty. That is a direct consequence of poorly run (corrupt) schools staffed with low quality teachers protected by the education bureaucracy and teacher's unions.

The real debate we should be having is whether our nation can continue to have a publicly funded education system that supports improving quality and can be a platform that provides any child regardless of economic class an opportunity to receive a quality education. I believe it can, but the situation as it stands today, particularly in poorer districts is not encouraging.

By the way, "public" and "private" are distinctions that I have found to be rather loose in China. Let's just say that the class system is alive and healthy post-Mao...

In specific terms, for 2010:

The mean Critical Reading score was 501. Education majors scored 481. The mean Mathematics score was 516. Education majors scored 486. The mean Writing score was 492. Education majors scored 477.

Results directly from a report from the College Board.

No, it is absolutely a reflection of the person. If you cannot purport yourself in a manner reflective of your education, maybe you should not be educating anyone.

What the teaching system needs is someone to upend the current system, which is essentially held for ransom by the education labor mafia. The reason teachers spend out of pocket is not because there is no money, it is because money that should be benefitting students goes to support poor institutional practices such as keeping poor performing teachers in the system, supporting generous benefits, and frivolous spending on administrative costs. And the parents that send their children to these institutions are powerless to change this or have any impact. All of this is the cost of succumbing to the teacher unions.

We should be glad you do not live in Jersey City. We need voters willing to elect people in place to buck the current system. While you might mistakenly believe the commenter is dismissive of teachers, what I see is someone willing to stand up for quality teachers who still care about their craft and care about the children they teach.

"The problem with education politics is that people like you love to totally distort the issues. Ya, there are problems on both sides, but we aren't even having honest debates yet."

His was about the closet to an honest debate yet. I also lived in China, and let's be honest, kids from elite families are not in public schools. They go to private schools where they get a superior education and teachers that are subject to much more scrutiny. That being said, as in the US, public schools in wealthier districts are measurably better than poorer districts. I remember walking into a public school in Tongchuan near Xi'an that was nothing more than a tiny wooden frame with aluminum for the ceiling and siding. That was in sharp contrast to a school outside of my apartment in Beijing in Haidian Qu where most of the elite universities are which sported computers, modern facilities, and well educated teacher. Not too much different than a public school in Palo Alto as an example.

Your comment however is more a deflection than addressing the real issue which is teacher quality and whether teachers should be evaluated and paid according to performance. Taking the though further, would a free-market education system rather than the current public system be a better option for improving educational results? That would be a more interesting conversation to have, if you are willing to participate.

"most urban school districts are staffed with a high percentage of people that have no business anywhere close to a classroom, let alone actually teaching in it."

It is even more dire that than. The pool of teacher candidates is already compromised since the students pursuing education majors are already the poorest performing of any other college major. Even discounting for the worst performers never completing the degree and licensing requirements, we are generally not talking about a group that is blazing any intellectual trails. Then once a teacher secures a position, there is little incentive for a teacher to improve on the job. Nearly every other job would require some amount for ongoing training, but in education that is rarely implemented.

Teacher quality starts with making the field attractive to more higher performing students. That only happens if the field provides incentives to reward excellence and hard work, and the current arrangement just does not do that. It rewards mediocrity.

LOL, Hacker News roulette...

Nice article though and a change from the usual bashing of PayPal that generally masquerades as cogent discussion here. It is clear that PayPal is finally putting some effort behind the "Developer Community" rhetoric they have touted for a couple of years.

Completely disagree with OP. While SXSW did not "make" Twitter, it certainly helped get things rolling. To say that Twitter was well on its way with tons of traction is a gross overstatement. What SXSW did was provide a logical testbed for Twitter in an environment that made sense. If anything, SXSW was the first large scale event that helped legitimize Twitter.

What I would agree with is that every startup needs to assess whether SXSW makes sense to attend. Several founders I am close to attended and each come back with at least a few tangible takeaways. Some met and secured investors for their seed rounds, others clicked with potential future hires/co-founders, and then some left with solid biz dev deals that moved the traction needle.

As with any event, you make of it what you put in. If you just go to drink, eat, and party, then chances are you are wasting the opportunity. If however you maximize the networking by setting some objectives, showing something tangible, staying sober, and meeting as many people as you can, then maybe you can have a positive and worthwhile experience that more than covers the cash expense and lost productivity.

I agree that the vitriol towards Ask is unwarranted, though I do find the inclusion in the Java install to be very much in the realm of crapware.

Poor thing, and was your latte not warm enough this morning?

Please get off the soapbox, this guy is not a criminal and no one is suggesting that "everything should be legal".

Chill out dude. He was doing something at an individual level (successfully I might add) that corporations do readily without even the faintest idea of the how, why, or what.

Criminal? Please, how most corporations operate is what is criminal.

I think Anil missed something in his allusion to AOL. There was an Internet before AOL that a few of us were actively using. There was a thing called “the web” that some folks were toying with while the masses toiled in Prodigy and AOL. Were those services bad or evil? No, but they accelerated the onramping of the next generation of Internet adopters that then quickly moved to the wild and free Web. With the development of the web came all sorts innovation and novel services that brought order to the often chaotic web.

We are on the same onramp now as we were in the late 90’s. Facebook, Twitter, et. al. are just another stopping point to whatever comes next. We lost some things along the way, we abandoned some of our anonymity, and in some ways our freedom and experience suffered. But we have also gained tremendously in the decade since. We have smartphones with apps that guide us to cool places and discovery new experiences. We have apps that make our shopping experiences easier and cheaper. We have apps that let us express ourselves in sounds, pictures, videos, text, and to share those expressions of ourselves to the world in a few clicks. We can find any number of experts and sites that offer assistance without flipping open phonebooks or blindly Googling the world.

Yes, we lost something. I also agree that we have forgotten some of the earlier values that made the web such a joy. We got enticed by free apps and gaudy user experiences. However, there will be a backlash someday and the next generation of Internet users will jump outside of these walled gardens to take control of their own online identity.

What they do not tell you in lean startup; your early users are your unwitting product testers. Thus the calculus becomes how quickly you can plug the gaps and deliver the real MVP before your users bail en masse.

I am surprised no one mentioned just how god awful the "Oatmeal Studios" greeting cards are. Unfortuantely for Inman however, this case is legit.

Most important point was actually before the points listed: do business development yourself and figure out the sales process/value proposition before hiring for sales/BD folks. You will never get a handle on what customers want, how they buy, and why they buy if you do not roll up your sleeves and sell your thing yourself.

I agree for the most part. The motivations and ethos of startups and agencies / dev shops / et al. are not aligned. Thus you have a huge potential for failure, which I have experienced first hand as an entrepreneur and seen repeated numerous times as an investor.