nwenzel

I think some of the aggregation of query counts here would be helpful. I'm also a django debug tool bar user. I typically scan the SQL and can visually identify the repeats. My wish there would be aggregating the counts, sum'ing time, and sorting by time rather than execution order.

Step 1 to learning new stuff: stop using self-defeating language. Step 2: Jump in and give it a try. There's no substitute for actually building something.

If we all avoided every airline that had bad service, we wouldn't fly ever again. Airline customer service might be improved if they rotated their customer service people more often. I would imagine it's draining to only hear complaints all day everyday. No excuse for that behavior though.

Check out this company that helps get compensation from delayed flights. http://www.getairhelp.com/

* airhelp was a recent YC company. I am also a YC alum but I've never met the founders nor do I have any financial interest in the company.

Good points all the way around. Do you think SQL's obtuseness comes from it's ability to do more than (perhaps) it should?

Maybe it really only should be used for simple queries with simple where clauses. But because it can be used for more, we choose to do so.

It's based on relational algebra making it fairly predictable (query optimizer aside which is completely unpredictable). It operates on relations and returns relations.

"Select * from MyRelation;" returns a relation. So we could also write "select * from (select * from MyRelation);" and get the same result. You can continue that nested select as many times as you like and with as much complexity as you like and it would still work. Though undoubtedly it gets difficult to follow.

Adding to the obtuseness, SQL is not typed. So for "select * from MyRelation where SomeField = 1;" you could replace the 1 with another select statement, which would return a relation. But as long as that relation had a single column and a single row, it would be interpreted as a single value and successfully replace the 1.

Also adding to the obtuseness as you get more complex is that it variable scope for table aliases can be difficult to follow. Table alias names can be used across various select, where, from and other clauses to link them together through a common filter but it happens in the single SQL statement.

I think it's that common issue of reducing a "program" into a so gel statement that causes the issues I run into. At times, I feel that I am writing what basically amounts to a stored procedure in a single statement. That's when I start getting mad at SQL. Though, it's really my own choices that made it a problem.

It would seem from the article that the business model not only requires the free protection, but that the enforcement of fines an judgements is a major driver of revenues.

In your hypothetical example, I believe you are referring to a physical storefront where the primary revenue generating activity is to sell merchandise.

If your hypothetical shopkeeper had a shop that made more money from forcing shoplifters to pay a fine for scaling, then... perhaps. I don't think your hypothetical shop exists, so it's tough for me to answer.

All of the examination of costs in the comments assume a zero cost of enforcement. Free courts, free police, free jailing or fine enforcement of any violators.

Without that free enforcement, these $5-$50 items would not be worth fighting over.

I don't believe that police protection should be a fee-for-service business, but are there no checks and balances on the use of public services for private gain?

> Althoff and co used a standard machine learning algorithm to comb through all the possible correlations.

What exactly is a "standard machine learning algorithm"?

I'm sure that probably means that they used something from scikit-learn but "comb[ing] through correlations" isn't as simple as clicking the Go button.

The rest of the article does start to get into labeling, holding out a test set, and some of the data cleanup (the real combing working).

I guess I was just hoping for more detail of how it worked and not that it worked. I get that this wasn't meant to be a PhD thesis on supervised machine learning, but the mechanics of data analysis are really interesting as a process of discovery.

Curious to know what others think. How did the balance of how vs that work for you?

“These students are going to produce an outsized portion of the major technological, medical, mathematical, scientific, economic advances of the next generation,”

When I was In school, there was a GATE program (gifted and talented education ???). But I think it was meant to target the top 10% or 20% of students. But when you think about where the really big advances for civilization will come from, maybe there should be a focus on the top 1% or 2%. That's sort of the opposite of public school today. I suppose instead of No Child Left Behind, it's No Child Left Unchallenged.

+1 for mâche. If anyone is trying to get more greens in their diet but need some sort of alternative to lettuce and spinach, give it a try. Tough to find, but worth it. Nutty flavor, not at all bitter like arugula.

It may possibly be that search today is used to find a particular thing that you are looking for (directions, a way to fix code, a specific book). Whereas in the future, search will lead you to new things that you didn't specifically know you needed to find. More like browsing random sections of a book store.

But yes, it definitely sounds like it's saying that search will be a tool to search for things.

Take a look at Castext.com. Not only searchable, but also annotated so non-lawyers like myself have the benefit of someone explaining what it actually means.

For business with a limited sales window and highly perishable inventory (bagel store in the morning), standing in line may be the bottleneck preventing more customer and order throughput. If the store is able to expand their capacity via an order ahead app allowing them to capture new sales they would not have otherwise gotten, 8% seems much more reasonable.

Of course, some existing customers and sales will also move in that direction, so the answer here may be, as is often the case, it depends.

What I find truly fascinating is that Square is(was) a "payments" company. Or, more specifically, a credit card terminal company. But this offering and their recent acquisition of BookFresh makes them more of a back-end for small business. They may be one of the few companies to have figured out how to sell to small business at scale.

Apparently the answer there is, find something small, complicated, and annoying... fix it. Build that toehold into a platform to take on the larger opportunity.

To clarify some of the names mentioned in this and other articles, Toyota Motor Corporation is the Japanese company that builds cars and trucks. Toyota Motor Sales is the US company that sells Toyotas in North America. Toyota Financial Services is the US captive auto finance company that offers financing at most US Toyota dealerships (except, coincidentally, in Texas, where it's handled by another company).

That's fantastic! I'm sure you're already connected to Skysong. The ASU W.P. Carey school of business has a new head of the entrepreneur program (I think it used to be called Spark). Sidnee Peck took over the program. She'd probably be a great person to meet to get ASU students and alums to check out the space. Let me know if you want an intro.

Grand St emails have really interesting stuff. They have things you don't often come across in the real world. Congrats to Amanda and team!

Yeah, definitely could have used this a few years back when loading up on camera gear for a big safari vacation. I've used the lenses a few times since then, but mostly stick with one or two go to options. The rest sit on a shelf.

Is a16z building an engineering team to be shared by their early stage startups? If hiring early developers is one if the tougher challenges, this team may be their answer.

Private Equity firms started getting much more hands-on operationally with their portfolio when some balance sheet trimming was no longer sufficient for a quick flip. Though most of that involvement is straight out of the 1990s management consulting playbook. It's mostly vendor management and leveraged procurement. The purchasing arm for Blackrock and TPG companies is (was?) Staples largest customer. [0]

[0] http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/24/news/companies/buyouts_priva...

Question for the OP: Who profits from the service? Who profits more by "misleading" borrowers, lenders, and/or donors?

If the OP is uncovering exorbitant fees, someone must be getting rich. I'd like to know what happens when you follow the money. If no one is getting rich, is that evidence of an honest service trying to make the world better for those born someplace other than the developed world?

Not quite what you asked for but Word Rake removes extra text (extra adjectives, phrases, filler words) to get you to something more concise and readable. They have a focus on legal docs. http://www.wordrake.com

I'm not really sure you can say there are a lack of enterprise startups anymore. Certainly there are more consumer facing companies for many of the reasons you cite. I also don't think is just for 20-year olds. Certainly it helps to not have financial obligations of a spouse and children, but plenty of my batch mates were in their 30s (like me), married (like me), and had kids (yup, me too).

Great post Rick! I'm thankful that companies like Comprehend led the way for enterprise companies at YC. After my batch (S2013) and the most recent Demo Day, I think it's pretty clear that YC provides a lot of value to enterprise startups.

For any B2B founder wondering if YC is a fit for your company, don't let old stereotypes get in the way of applying. YC is not just consumer. It's not just 20-year olds (I was 35). YC is a network of the smartest, most passionate people you've ever met.

Possibly the "wealthy" appear to be living hand to mouth intentionally. Inflation is a highly regressive tax on cash and savings that rewards hard/real assets.

Buying the most expensive house you can (barely) afford is a wealth building strategy. It's not without risk, but you have inflation on your side. Sitting on cash to save up for that down payment is an uphill fight against inflation.

As a parent of a 3.5 and 1 year old, I'm definitely a believer that our public schools are de facto private institutions. You pay your tuition one way or another for a premium product.

Friendly reminder... Label your axis people! Especially if you're using them as evidence to prove your point. Though, due to the image quality, I'm wondering if these images were actually taken from the original study rather than produced by The Atlantic.

Ask pg: What does the pg of today (the pg with kids) think about what the pg of the past (circa 2004) wrote about the parts of the essay related to kids?

If there's something interesting to diff, it's the ideas people have that pertain to taboos and taboo subjects before and after kids.

I suspect if more developers and engineers had kids, iPads would have a kid mode. I wonder how thinkers and writers (and painters?) would think and write and paint differently with/without kids.

I realize the article is pro-multilingual, but I disagree with the notion that time spent learning a foreign language is time not spent learning another subject.

My son was in Spanish immersion preschool from age 2 until 3 years 4 months. He can speak and understand Spanish and understands that he speaks a language that my wife and I don't. Then we moved and put him in Mandarin/English bilingual school. He's 2.5 months into the program and can already count, follow basic instructions, and make basic requests.

Learning a language at that age has basically been a free layer of learning added on top of his education and growth. To him, it's not even "learning" it's just talking and playing and singing.

There's no opportunity cost at that age to stacking blocks with English instruction or some other language. Why wouldn't we take advantage of that time in our kids' lives by immersing them in another language?

Of course it could just be that my son is the smartest kid in the whole world. That's probably true, too.

Awesome! Anything to get rid of paper from my workflow. Not so much about the environment (though, that's good too). But dealing with paper is such a productivity killer.

For less snark and more helpfulness, consider removing "I am not going to read". I think you'll be happier and less likely to be perceived as snarky.

Very helpful to have a UI for digging through profiler results. I use the django debug toolbar but I think your profiler will be incredibly helpful for finding bottlenecks. Thanks for posting, thanks for sharing.

Pretty sure they do all states now. I don't work for them, but I'm definitely a fan.

I can say without any doubt in my mind, without Jason's advice and the mock interview he took me through, I would not have been accepted into YC.

Nothing else will be as helpful as a mock interview. Jason's advice is on point, direct, and helpful. He's probably as close as you get to the real thing.