jmm

I'm doing a project looking at startup hubs, and some of the related factors. Here's a map of LA startups with some neighborhood outlines: http://imgur.com/hiG3Y .

The data is a crawl from crunchbase, so it's not perfect, but it provides a rough indicator or where startups have popped up over the last 5 years.

The raster underlay is a function of point density within a set radius.

Nice. Thanks!

You can enter a zipcode anonymously into the Google doc. I'm not trying to locate or map specific HN users, just trying to create an anonymous index via the HN userbase. If that offends your sense of privacy, my apologies.

I'm a grad student in City and Regional Planning, and taking a Geographic Information Systems class. I need to submit a proposal for a final project, and was thinking of doing some kind of analysis relating to startup hubs. I'd probably borrow some ideas from this essay -- looking at population and demographic metrics (numbers/density), the historical presence of startups and higher ed in an area (environment), walkability and the presence of something like "cafe culture" (chance). I'd hope that the analysis partly aligns with existing hubs, and perhaps suggest some

If anyone has any ideas for a data source to look at besides census data, Crunchbase, and maybe national chain cafe store locators, give a shout. pg??? I'd obviously share the report...

Call me insensitive, but I think the drama here is overblown. Renting out your room to strangers comes with risks. Theft is an obvious one. Could have been a one or two paragraph post, but maybe this is part of the catharsis in getting over a robbery.

And now call me a cynic, but I kind of have the feeling that the the public drama of this complaint is a way of getting the sweetest customer service response ever from AirBnB. Like, new gear, near apartment, moving costs, all of it. Almost like a cooked up insurance claim... if it's not that, AirBnB will probably experience that kind of scam at some point.

I went to go see the dude from Catch Me if You Can speak a few years ago and one of the takeaways was that a cross cut shredder isn't very secure (pages are easy to reconstruct). Gor for a micro shredder.

Disruptive criticism? :)

Kickstarter campaign, anyone? (to produce an iPad + Square dongle enclosure)

My uncle owns a few elder care franchises and had me look into monitoring services as a funemployment project. So I've spent a bit more time with this than I'd like to admit...

The company I was most impressed with was http://www.halomonitoring.com . The device seems to be designed well and the monitoring services (online portal for caregivers or family members) are impressive, comparatively.

There's kind of a sea change happening with home health monitoring -- from the "I've fallen and can't get up" devices to more robust and interactive solutions. GE recently bought a company that provides institutional monitoring equipment and services.

Lemme know if you want the full report :)

Thanks. The relationship to the housing bubble is interesting, no doubt. In my mind, no two things have been more connected to class aspirations/freedoms over the last 50 years than home ownership and higher ed. There are class and race issues at play in both cases, which makes new prescriptions pretty tough to make, especially on a political level.

But a problem has been identified here -- too many people are spending too much on money on phantom educational assets. Now the solution -- fewer people should go to college. (Especially expensive low to mid tier schools?) I guess what I was really asking above, is: so what should they do instead? And I'm guessing the answer ain't so pretty, something even more offensive to the idea of the American dream than the analogous housing case, of "sorry, just keep on renting."

What gets me about many of these articles is how broad a brush they often use when describing "the education bubble." And so I appreciate that this article at least gestures at different types of grad school, and how student/consumer demand may be decreasing.

But I'd to read more about specific bad "educational investment" decisions, and what makes these decisions bad, as a way of prescribing better pathways for students sizing up their college or grad school options. Specifically, what are the bigger competing opportunities that should entice these "kids" away from educational debt and opportunity cost? Thiel's program can only be a very small part of the re-balancing act, I think.

Point me in the right direction if you've already read it...

Just as Cornell U uses the water from Cayuga Lake. Pretty cool :)

I think there are different facets to the bubble that need to be separated out to talk coherently about its implications...

You can look at the bubble from the vantage point of the schools that are competing to keep up with the spending of the ivys and have overextended themselves: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a...

And you can also look at it from the perspective of the students that are emerging from mid or low tier institutions with a hefty chunk of debt relative to their likely earning potential.

Peter's (or Sarah's) focus on the Harvard kids seems to be the least compelling part of a potential education bubble. These are smart kids who either leave school with no debt in the case that they are poor to lower middle class, and with parental support (of the monetary kind) if they're on the other side of the wealth spectrum. So maybe they're "wasting" four years where they could be creating a business, but they're not in dire straights upon graduation or necessarily compelled to sell their souls. Check out Harvard's financial aid policies: http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/financial_aid/hfai...

I do think there needs to be some different paths put before kids in general as they contemplate "college as the only option" but I don't think Thiel is quite right to target the ivy kids as they have the least reason to fear an education bubble bursting -- because of the lasting [perceived] quality of their degree, their lack of debt in a lot of cases, their campus-born connections to smart and wealthy classmates and alums, and their smarts.

Right. Tho the pop up restaurants that I've heard of have been set up by chefs with some sort of following via a previous venture... this thing here ain't that.

I like this retort, fourply. Fred is basically complaining into the void here if he's not willing to put real pressure on the shiny law firms by considering going elsewhere if they don't shape up. Kinda weird actually that he showed his hand here...

I wonder if missed investments like this have the senior guys listening to the junior members a bit more, or whether the young guys are wrong enough to keep it biz as usual.

He had what could be considered a rough week with one of his other pet ideas... why Silicon Valley reigns supreme: http://www.boston.com/business/technology/innoeco/2011/03/wh...

The article is a basically a video re-cap, without much added insight. If you're gonna get to the bottom of the article and watch the videos anyway, just skip right to it and watch the videos from the git-go.

I hope you realize that the Cardpool marketplace requires sellers who aren't happy (or aren't wanting to redeem) the gift cards they have in hand. And they take a loss, of sorts, for you to get your discount. That doesn't happen with cash.

I'll also say that I'm glad Carpool exists to limit breakage to some extent, but I'd be much happier if gift cards were gone altogether. Your discount notwithstanding...

Agreed. Ever go to a farmers market and run out of cash? That sucks. And Square is helping to fix that problem. Sure, some farmers might still prefer cash only (since the market entity usually already takes a cut off the top), but at least it gives farmers who aren't selling out of certain items the possibility of increasing their sales.

Other use cases??? Flea markets, artists, street vendors, school functions (fairs, car washes, etc.), fund-raising or charity things, paying a cover at a party or at an art/music venue, masseuses and the like, gambling debts and poker games... I could go on. One thing I'm curious about is whether Square forbids min charges or charge-ups the way credit cards do ("you owe me $100, but I don't want to pay the fee, so pay me ~$103 instead"). Not that they could really enforce it any better than credit card companies...

Nice domain name... got me thinking. I wish there existed a community I respected that curated books on all topics. Like, I'd love to have fivegoodbooks extend from topics like Ruby and Python to Russian History and Urban Planning.

Another interesting idea maybe would be to map the annotations/bibliographies of all books, so I could start with books I've read and better see what kind of linkings exist. You could visually see the seminal works in a field and all the branchings. Maybe that already exists in some form?

This is hilarious. And fits nicely with the expression, "girls are like parking spots; the good ones are always taken."

That might be a sad state of affairs but I didn't see the author making it out to be the result of an immoral decision. Just a bad decision.

Kind of unfortunate that this is the top comment here since the article has nothing to do with the immorality of outsourcing. I took his mention to be a throwaway nod of the head to the typical discussion of outsourcing. Then he moved on.

So, pray tell, what would you do as a troublesome young bloke hanging out in Harlem or Kansas City today?

I'll submit that some aspect of keeping kids in school is an attempt to keep those kids out of small trouble now and big trouble later. Paternalistic laws/rules very often rub the most responsible members of society the wrong way when they apply them to themselves. Moreover, applying rules for children to adults will also push your intuitions in a certain way.

Believing in a kid's potential to be a productive member of society, I'd argue, is an even more edifying way of acknowledging their status as a human being. Your version when applied to poor city kids is basically, "sure, it's cool if you want to go become a vandal/drug dealer/future inmate; whatever."

Also, you're giving kids too much credit. Kids will almost always maximize short term payoff at the expense of long term success (hyperbolic discounting?). And good parenting is about balancing those inclinations. In the absence of good parenting, schools can pick up some of the slack.

Just because the line is fuzzy doesn't mean there isn't one.

(I'm not sure if you're trying to weaken my argument by challenging the idea of childhood altogether (which would be weird), or if you're just curious. If it's the former, we're probably not going to have a productive discussion. If it's the latter, I'm open to suggestions, though it probably deserves the attention of an educational psychologist or someone like that.)

A false dichotomy and a broken analogy walk into a bar...

The choice isn't between universal access to education and easier expulsion. We need to find a better way to deal with the problem kids, and to improve our education system in general.

I understand that the analogy is seductive for you because it leads to a "throw them overboard" proclamation on utilitarian grounds. But it glosses over a facet of the school system -- it's not a logical necessity that failures are required for successes.

Ha. The pickle here is that we (the government, the bleeding hearts, those capable of compassion) have to acknowledge that these kids were dealt a pretty bad hand, and that they are, after all, still kids. So we owe them a fair shot and some patience -- it's not acceptable to give up on them as products of the system. Because in one way or another we're part of the system. And they're kids.

My sister participated in the New York Teaching Fellows program (similar to TFA) and worked in Spanish Harlem and her experience was much the same as the author's. So I'm not saying the current situation and the current programs are ideal or well managed, but there are interesting hope-inducing projects and people out there.

p.s. Go watch season 4 of The Wire and see if it tugs at your heartstrings a bit. It also paints a good picture of how screwed up the school system itself is in poor urban communities. Not to mention how pedogogical innovation is treated in the academic setting...

p.p.s. If you're curious about the role of academic philanthropy and the Broad Foundation which the author mentions, have a read: http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=3781 . I haven't read a counterpoint to that piece yet, so I'm not sure how well the criticisms stand up.

Exactly. I got in a little argument with my sister the other day about how obnoxious the modified bikes were that cruise around her neighborhood in San Juan, Puerto Rico. People attach little two-stroke engines (or whatever) that are loud and polluting. My argument was basically, just f'ing pedal. But she made the point that in the tropics, sometimes you want to avoid the sweating that comes from just a few pedals down a sunny street, and, second, not everyone can afford a scooter or moped (or ac'ed car!).

Puerto Rico just announced proposed penalties for these modded bikes, which seem a bit harsh: http://www.elnuevodia.com/noticia_noticias_politica-879951.h...

Perhaps you're both being a bit too literal? I think what Chris is trying to say is that while it may be more obvious to pursue a consumer facing startup because of the attention they get, entrepreneurs should still keep in mind the less shiny/immediately gratifying things. Because the existence of the first set creates an opportunity for the second. Things like Heroku.

Kind of apropos... I got stuck on a trip recently without a book, and grabbed a copy of Heyday off a shelf. It's a historical fiction novel about the gold rush period and how things in CA played out. Not a terrible read, if you're into that kind of thing.