jmm's comments

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...