Hacker News Reader

untamedmedleyon Census: Segregation hits 100-year lows in most American metro areas

On a related note:

http://www.gq.com/news-politics/mens-lives/200810/devin-frie...

This article, while somewhat old, does a great job of discussing just how shallow that 100-year "achievement" really is. We may live near each other, but that doesn't mean we interact in non-superficial ways.

untamedmedleyon What will kill Facebook?

My guess is the lack of adequate revenues that lead to real profits. Last I read, Facebook was breaking even. As they grow toward a billion users, I imagine those costs will rise. This is fine if ad revenues can keep up, but last I checked their average CTR was less than half a percent.

Facebook is odd in that it improves on a previous solution (communication tools: mail, phone, cellphones), but doesn't charge for the utility it brings.

untamedmedleyon Mark Zuckerberg Named TIME’s 2010 Person of the Year

While this isn't the first time wikileaks has been in the news, am I the only one that sees a problem with people's seeming interest in awarding this to whatever person is in the news closest to the time of the reveal?

Wikileaks has been in the public conscious for maybe a month (combined) this entire year. Regardless of your politics, you have to admit the Tea Party has been ever-present and incredibly effective at changing the makeup of our government and getting their message out. I don't see how wikileaks has that same (perceived) effect on everyday Americans' lives.

untamedmedleyon 10% unemployment yet every startup in NYC struggling to hire

Sounds nice at first but if Google can afford to hire the most experienced, why would they do something that goes against their bottom line?

From what I've seen, you've got a lot of developers commanding 60-80k salaries. From a startup perspective, I don't really understand why this is the only acceptable path.

It just seems smarter to locate near some technical colleges in cities that have a lower cost of living, and pay entry level developers a salary between 35-45k to start. As they improve their skills, you up their salary... assuming that improvement comes with an increase in revenues/profits.

untamedmedleyon I am a Female Sole Founder with no Dev Experience… Yeah, it’s a Tough Road

Raising children can be tough, but 60 hours of housework per week? In my house there's maybe 1-2 hours of cooking for dinner everyday and maybe 5 hours of cleanup on Saturday morning (this includes cleaning bathrooms, sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, etc.). Laundry takes 10 minutes to separate, then the machines pretty much do the rest of the job. Laundry gets done once a week for a family of four here for another 2-3 hours.

Maxing all those values, that's what, 22 hours? Where are the other 38 coming from?

ETA: I'm not being facetious here, I genuinely want to know what those hours are being spent on. When you have very young children, sure, but by 6/7 kids in my family are expected to start being self-sufficient (in the ways they can, such as picking up their toys, brushing their own teeth). By the time you hit 10, you've been doing some serious work around the house. I also got my first job at 14...

untamedmedleyon Is The Silicon Valley Talent Shortage Getting Worse?

There is no pipeline. I see lots of comments about how entry level developers are useless. No one wants to train the next gen of developers, so companies are fighting over a smaller and smaller pool of people.

The only way to get any experience seems to be to start your own company. Which is great for the person who goes off and does it, but not smart for the company trying to hire them.

If employers don't want to waste money investing in entry-level positions, why waste it investing in someone who has made it clear they want to work for themselves?

Pay less, train more.

untamedmedleyon The State of Jay-Z's Empire

No, the answer is NOT that art is subjective. I don't think it can be boiled down that easily, but if I were to try and answer succinctly, I would say the difference is there because black people, specifically African Americans, live in a culturally parallel America where there are different rules about what is and isn't acceptable. There is intense pressure on Black men to be "hard" and the way to express that is usually laid out in song.

I actually DON'T think it's his responsibility to be a role model. BUT I think it's wrong to glorify his success without saying something about the path he walked/walks to obtain it. He is 40-something and STILL writing lyrics about selling drugs.

As for citing examples, I'm sorry, I haven't been keeping a running log of the number of funerals I've been to, the guys I've known who've gotten shot, the women (including myself) who've been physically harassed by guys trying to re-enact the latest video, the children who are lost to drug addicted parents, and every other societal ramification that comes from supporting hip hop culture without qualifying/recognizing the damage it does to the black community. I live it, I think that's enough.

untamedmedleyon The State of Jay-Z's Empire

Jay-Z promotes ambition, through whatever means necessary.

Exactly. ::sigh::

untamedmedleyon The State of Jay-Z's Empire

I'm sorry but this idea that you get a pass for drug dealing and misogynistic lyrics because you are black and from a poor background needs to just die.

There are options that don't involve poisoning the very community you claim to care about through drugs and promoting a lifestyle/"profession" that can get someone killed or sent to jail.

untamedmedleyon The State of Jay-Z's Empire

What's entertainment for a lot of Jay-Z's listeners is more like a guidebook for far too many young black men (and the women who chase men like him). I personally like rap and know that if you dig deeper into many of Jay-Z's songs, you'll find more substance, but that doesn't negate the fact that he has a far more negative than positive influence on people who need all the positive role models they can get.

I upvoted the comment above yours because I see his (and other rappers) influence firsthand among friends and family members and it's really very depressing. Sometimes I don't know how I justify listening to his music...

untamedmedleyon Ask HN: Zero programming experience and badly want to learn. Where to start?

1. If you don't already have familiarity with HTML and CSS, learn those first. I recommend a book called Learning Web Design: http://www.learningwebdesign.com/

It teaches like a math book, with practice problems after each lesson.

2. Pick a language to learn. I had a C++ background that I hadn't touched since high school, so I found Ruby a little confusing. But it may also be because of the teaching style of the books I used...

Anyway, I switched to PHP and learned from Larry Ullman's book, PHP 6 and MySQL 5 (http://www.dmcinsights.com/phpmysql3/)

3. Going through both of these will probably take you 2-3 months if you're diligent. But once you're halfway through the second book, I'd say you know enough to start building something and using the PHP book as a reference.

What you'll find is that as you build things, you will learn a lot more about how to make your app come together.

Also, I disagree with the comment that it takes years to be able to do something decent with your newfound programming knowledge. Yes, it will take years before you can talk shop with the best of them, but as someone who has taken several languages (Spanish, Japanese, Latin) and played several instruments (piano, flute), I know it doesn't have take years to get past doing scales.

That's has more to do with ability to learn quickly and dedication.

untamedmedleyon Women Don't Want To Run Startups Because They'd Rather Have Children

Had this article been written by a man, people would zero in immediately on Penelope's real issue:

She is trying to blame her failure on being a woman.

She's started several startups, and each time has failed to create anything that matched her original entrepreneurial dreams. Unfortunately, because this is such a hot topic in tech, and it "verifies" (with purely anecdotal evidence) many people's biases on the issue, people aren't even pointing this out.

I'm calling BS. Trunk is looking for an excuse to explain why her failures aren't her fault (Biology). Instead of writing a meaningful postmortem on how difficult entrepreneurship can be, we get this tripe that's supposed to apply to all (or most) women. Nevermind that there are women in a variety of incredibly demanding professions with children.

Beyond that, I really don't get this notion that you have to be in your children's faces every moment of the day in order for them to be well-adjusted. There's a huge difference between parenting/discipline and hovering/coddling.

untamedmedleyon Thanks For Paying Taxes. Here's A Receipt.

The way some of the line items are written/described is very misleading.

Setting aside money for "Low Income K-12 students" or Foreign Aid or Amtrak (with prices as high as flying and quadruple the travel time) does not necessarily mean that investment is getting results.

I'd only trust a receipt like this if it were annotated with hard numbers on how my dollars turn into meaningful progress.

untamedmedleyon The Difficulty of Hiring Women

You're right, though I do think a lot of the issue has nothing to do with explicit instances of sexism. A lot of things don't need to be said out loud to have a negative effect on women in the field.

untamedmedleyon The Difficulty of Hiring Women

The difference here is probably the degree to which this affects each gender. While no man wants to limit his options in women, being in a relationship probably doesn't define his sense of self-worth the way it does with women. Of course, not all women are this way, but women often sacrifice bits of themselves in the name of love. We are more likely to:

1. Give up time with our friends/hobbies to be completely there for a boyfriend, all the time.

2. Move to a new city to be with a guy (who sometimes isn't even planning to marry us), giving up any career progress made to date.

And that's even before adding a layer of geekiness that I've found acts as man repellent to most "mainstream" male populations. I cannot just go to a party and start talking about how happy I am that Mass Effect 2 is coming to PS3 now that I sold my 360, nor can I go any deeper than "I like computers" with most guys. It's just not all that hot. But the chick who has a fantasy football team (and doesn't know it's filled with D-list players) gets the welcome mat (eta: because sports is accepted in the mainstream).

untamedmedleyon The Difficulty of Hiring Women

I don't want to push too hard, but here's two reasons it would be better for you to pull out that list:

The first is that it gives a heads up to the few women here who are just entering the field. It may open up discussions for how to handle such situations when they arise.

The other reason is that not sharing these examples is just as good as saying they never happened. Real concerns become phantom accusations of prejudice against women that don't ever get addressed.

untamedmedleyon A Tale of Two Users, or How Design is Tough

I agree that if your site metrics show large numbers of people set to buy but abandoning their purchase because the checkout process is confusing, then you should work to make it more user friendly.

But what I'm saying is every designer should be asking 1. How many people are having this unique difficulty and 2. Is it worth the time and COST to fix it? Moreover, will adding the information/steps to needed to clarify the process bore/put off the majority of customers who already know how to use this (for example, a tutorial that either adds an additional step or doesn't allow users to bypass it)?

A good designer should be able to plan for contingencies, but a good businessperson should be able to draw the line between pleasing a customer and watching their bottom line.

untamedmedleyon A Tale of Two Users, or How Design is Tough

Isn't this more an example of when it's best to let a customer go?

Is the cost associated with meeting this small percentage of customer's needs worth actually meeting them?

untamedmedleyon How YC helped InDinero raise over 1M in angel funding [audio]

I haven't finished listening to the full podcast yet, but I think one of the most interesting things about this interview is that it shows aggressive behavior in a woman is very well received among many VCs.

A lot of the discussions about women in the workplace (tech and otherwise) have shown that women who make demands aren't taken as seriously as aggressive, blunt men since it goes against people's beliefs about what a woman should be.

(http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2009/12/can_nice_girls_negotiate.htm...)

What we have here is a female entrepreneur who raised funds without mincing words. It's pretty inspiring.

untamedmedleyon How 'Waiting for “Superman”' Will Further Fuel the Education Debate

Given a choice between what we have now and a cram school culture, I would prefer the latter. At least then the (predominantly poor, black, and latino) students our public education system routinely fails would have a fighting chance at a decent life.

That said, I don't want to give the impression that cram school culture should accepted and imported wholesale to America. I used cram schools as an example of outside forces based in capitalism acting as a self-correcting mechanism for a public school system. Given the political difficulties of transforming public schools, I think it would be helpful to have at least one place students can go to receive an education.

untamedmedleyon The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

RE: Soul Food, one of the comments on the OKC site mentioned that Soul Food applies not only to a style of cuisine, but also to a movie and subsequent spin-off series on HBO.

The reason it pops up so frequently is because the movie is hailed within the black community as one of the few Hollywood productions that presents black people as multi-dimensional humans that deal with a number of problems related to race, class, and life in general. It's a classic.

untamedmedleyon The Real ‘Stuff White People Like’

If the goal of black and latino OKC members is to attract members of the opposite sex within their race (which is most likely the case), then it would make sense that they would communicate in their own vernacular.

That is, a black person who is otherwise educated might use a phrase that makes perfect sense to other black people (e.g. "where dey do dat at?"; often used to express confusion at someone's ridiculous behavior) but that isn't clear to the mainstream. Latinos may pepper their profiles with Spanish words.

Asians might do this too if there wasn't so much ethnic/linguistic diversity among the Asian American population. As such, they likely use "safe" mainstream wording.

All this is to say that there are reasons that have nothing to do with intelligence that could have caused this sort of result.

untamedmedleyon How 'Waiting for “Superman”' Will Further Fuel the Education Debate

I missed your second point. Gray, Fenty's opponent, has been elusive about his thoughts on Rhee; silence is undoubtedly playing in his favor here. Rhee has already made it clear that she won't stick around long without the level of support (and freedom) Fenty has given her so far.

untamedmedleyon How 'Waiting for “Superman”' Will Further Fuel the Education Debate

I apologize for the lack of clarity. Didn't want to get too far into the weeds, but I think after school is a great place to start. My favorite example of this are Japanese cram schools (Juku), which serve a much larger and varied function than most people who have heard of them realize.

Japan has an extensive network of for-profit after school programs that act as a check on the standards enacted in Japanese public schools. When the Ministry of Education decided to change its standards (which affect curriculum across the nation), the juku responded by offering tougher courses, balancing out any perceived weakening of the public schools. Rosegaard's book is my favorite on the subject of Juku: http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Education-Cram-School-Busines...

There is some inherent unfairness to that system, mainly having to do with parents who can and can't pay for juku. But there are ways to mitigate the issues caused by socioeconomic differences. Some of those issues have already been somewhat addressed in America by the Supplementary Educational Services (http://www2.ed.gov/nclb/choice/help/ses/index.html) portion of NCLB. The program essentially forces failing schools to pay for after school tutoring.

I'd prefer a better designed SES program, but I think after school could be more promising than charters or vouchers for several reasons:

1. After school addresses the reality that children are as, if not more, affected by experiences outside of the normal school day 2. It would help avoid many of the contentious issues surrounding teachers unions 3. It would allow for innovative approaches to curriculum and teaching without the burdens of having to supply everything we expect from a school (music, art, gym programs; extracurriculars, tricked out facilities) 4. It might stimulate a growth of small, education-oriented businesses in poor/minority communities (there are several successful, minority-owned tutoring companies in my hometown that rely on SES)

This isn't to say nothing should be done to reform schools from the inside. I just think we could use a two-pronged approach.

untamedmedleyon How 'Waiting for “Superman”' Will Further Fuel the Education Debate

Articles about education too often end with platitudes about how we need real debate to make changes occur. I'd argue we need action... preferably from the private sector.

Judging by the lack of comments on this article so far, not many people here follow this issue. The DC public schools are a microcosm of the whole ed reform movement, and an example of how difficult it can be to navigate the politics of reforming a corrupt system.

Rhee has done a lot to improve the efficiency of the district (in terms of getting books and supplies where needed, and using school resources wisely), but at the end of the day, her approach to reform (command and control vs. consensus building) is what will likely end her tenure early.

Right now, the mayor who backed her (Fenty) is in a tight race with a candidate who is exploiting people's distrust in a government that, for better or worse, acts based on what it believes is right for the people, not what the people believe is right for them.

Or, in the tl;dr edition:

When working within the confines of politics, you can get short bursts of successful but temporary reform, or you can be safe politically while accomplishing very little. There's gotta be another way.