Many people get tripped up by the this keyword in JavaScript. I think the confusion comes from people reasonably expecting this to work like “this” does in Java or the way people use “self” in Python. Although this is sometimes used to similar effect, it’s nothing like “this” in Java or other languages. And while it’s a little harder to understand, its behavior isn’t magic. In fact, this follows a…
This is a post to explain what Hacker School is. That is to say, to tell our friends and family what the heck we’ve been doing for the past six months and what we hope to do in the next couple years. But first, some context. Dave and I quit our jobs in May 2010 to build “OkCupid for jobs.” That quickly turned into “video prescreens for hiring,” (HireHive) which in turn begat “engineers recruiting…
What are the most beautiful ideas you've encountered? By beautiful, I mean ideas that surprised you, were intensely intellectually satisfying, and changed how you see the world. For instance, I was blown away when I learned about integration. I had been struggling to calculate the distance a ball traveled given its velocity and felt like it was impossible to do exactly. Then I learned about…
These instructions should get you going with an Emacs environment for writing Clojure on Mac OS X Lion. (This should work on older versions of OS X, but I've only tried it on 10.7.) Install Homebrew. Homebrew is an awesome package manager for OS X. You can obviously skip this step if you already have it installed. Otherwise, you can install it by reading these instructions or simply running: $…
At the core of Apple's success is an experience. It's the emotional bond people have with their products , an oft-ridiculed love that can border on obsession. Apple has achieved this by making products that delight or, as they say, feel like "magic." Few companies have ever reached this level. It's extremely hard and it takes considerable time. But there's one company that I think has a shot:…
People are talking about how Netflix is "doomed." Most of the arguments boil down to them being killed by increasing licensing costs or loss of high-quality content. These are both serious threats to Netflix and things they absolutely have to deal with. But before you get convinced that Netflix is over, ask yourself this: Will we ever live in a world where all movies and TV shows are available…
People frequently ask how to find a cofounder. My first response is always that their cofounder should be someone they get along with and know well, like a friend. They usually respond by saying they've already tapped their friends and extended network, and everyone who's good is already doing something else, so they need to meet someone new. This can work but assumes something that's almost…
America was founded on ideas. All of us hold a great deal of beliefs: Beliefs about how the world works, about which government policies make sense, about what is right and wrong, about what makes people tick. Which of your beliefs have you ever changed? How long have you believed the set that's currently swirling about in your head? The challenge is this: If your ideas haven't changed in years,…
Over the past seven years I've gotten good at napping. By "good" I mean I can consistently fall asleep inside of two minutes and wake up 20 minutes later feeling refreshed. I've even developed the ability to nap in a desk chair in a room with music playing and people talking. Here's what's worked for me: 1. Seize the moment. It's important - particularly when you're just starting out -- to nap…
Doing a startup is like climbing a mountain. You usually only see the peak you're currently scaling, and it's rarely the summit. These sub-peaks are the milestones along the way. They're things like finding a cofounder, having hypotheses tested, launches, raising rounds, getting paying customers, and making important hires. Before you hit each milestone, you'll tell yourself that when you reach it…
When starting a company you frequently have to ask people for things -- introductions, advice, a meeting, sponsorship, money, etc. As you progress, you'll also have more and more people asking you to do favors for them. Here's what I've learned about how to do this well: Be concise. Be nice and use pleasantries but not too many (if you're too obsequious or indirect it can be hard to figure out…
A trend I've noticed is that the value of my average social connection on networks where the connections are symmetric -- i.e., bidirectional, like friendships on Facebook -- tends to go down over time. That's because as sites grow and become more popular, a more varied assortment of people friend you. And there's a social pressure to accept these requests, particularly when you have some…
Sam Altman once told me that nothing is ever as risky as you think it is. That comment struck me as true and got me thinking about why. I've concluded that the reason is that our perception of risk is really a combination of two things: objective risk and subjective risk. By objective risk I mean the likelihood of objectively bad things happening. Riding a motorcycle without a helmet is…
People get too attached to their ideas. When you think about something for a long time it becomes "yours." That makes it hard for someone else to also feel ownership over it. But if you want a true cofounder, you need someone who feels like he owns an equal portion of the idea. That's why I think people should try to find cofounders before they develop their ideas. Even if you already have an…
I got to attend an Apple shareholder meeting in 2000. I was a total fanboy and had bought a bit of stock in the late 90s with money I made doing Mac tech support. My mom suggested that it'd be fun and educational for the two of us to go to the annual shareholder meeting. It was the first time I went to the valley and in fact the first time I went anywhere in California. Visiting 1 Infinite Loop…
It just dawned on me that one of the reasons I started using Foursquare and Instagram is that their specialization means I can feel less narcissistic. This is distinct from the other advantages they have from being specialized (e.g., doing one thing really, really well), because it's mostly a psychological advantage. They did this by giving me places where I'm expected to post my location and…
If you want to think new thoughts, try this: Take something you think is true, and then assume it's false. This is like having a mental teleporter, because it has the neat consequence of transporting you to a point in idea space that you're by definition not going to get to otherwise. To give it a try, think of a list of things you think are true. They can be anything really, from philosophical…
I like the idea that essays go places even the author doesn't expect. [1] Essays are like expeditions where you set out with a destination in mind, or maybe just a general direction. You might never get there, or you might wander down a path in a new direction, because along the way you'll notice something you didn't expect to see. The challenge is to get distracted by genuinely interesting…
One problem with having lots to do is you can trick yourself into always switching to the next thing without ever really doing anything. It lets you be lazy, since if you're working on something and it gets even moderately difficult, you can think to yourself, "Oh, I need to respond to that email from John," and then switch to Gmail. Then after writing a sentence to John and not knowing exactly…
I think there might be value to those dumb interview puzzles after all. Let me explain. Last week there was a Hacker News link to a post about a 140 interview questions Google supposedly asks (link removed in 2025 because the domain was taken over by spammers). I read over some of them and was quickly drawn in. Not because I expect to be interviewing for a job, but because a puzzle like that is…
I think the most important thing for being an entrepreneur is to know yourself. People say it's resilience or determination, but I think those are second-order attributes. You can't be determined to get something if you don't know what you really want. And you can be broken and pushed off your path if you don't know why you really want it. Ask yourself what you really want out of life. Is it fame?…
When I was in college, I spent a lot of late nights in the engineering building coding and doing problem sets. Every Thursday night the business school had a networking event, which my fellow engineers and I would walk past on our way to the EE or CS lounge. We'd joke that the MBA students were doing their version of "studying" as they stood around in their ties and jackets, drinking and mingling.…
I barely eked past @cdixon and @lethys for the coveted second-to-last place in a five-team game of Carcassonne last night. My strategy had been to make an early play for a central field, and then have a stake in one or two of the largest castles. Unfortunately, I didn't execute on this strategy well enough. I was one connecting tile away from getting two more followers onto the main field, which…
My friend Jonathan Wegener blogged yesterday about why he thinks young entrepreneurs shouldn't do business to business ("B2B") startups . My co-founder Dave and I are 20-somethings and our company HireHive is a B2B startup, so, unsurprisingly, I think Jonathan's totally wrong. Here's why: 1) Identifying Opportunities is Hard Nonsense. Identifying opportunities is easy. When Dave and I decided to…
Determination and perseverance are essential to starting a successful company. Everyone will tell you that one of the key differences between successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs is that the successful ones don't give up, even when things look bleakest. What people don't typically tell you is how to stay motivated. Many people assume that determination is innate -- some people are just…
1995 - I founded my first company, CoolMan Inc., releasing a GameMaker adventure game called "The Quest v. 1.0" on AOL. Despite being terrible in virtually every respect, a thousand people downloaded it at keyword:file search. 1996 - I founded my second company, Lightning Productions. And by "founded," I mean I started listing it in the optional "company" field when filling out forms online. I got…
For the past seven years, my personal living space has been under 100 square feet -- and sometimes substantially so. [1] My current bedroom is under 80 square feet, and I don't have a closet. I grew up in the suburbs where space is cheap and I was accustomed to having quite a bit of it. Then I went away to college and had to share a room with another person. Then I moved to New York. After living…
It may already be too late. The rigidity of custom and the tyranny of experience may already make the point of this letter moot by the time you read it, but I write nonetheless in the hope that such is not the case, that your mind is still open to persuasive and something beyond self-serving rationalizations masquerading as unbiased reason. Look around you. With each day, the new world progresses…
Since I'm a geek and I live with other geeks, we spend a decent amount of time talking about how we can live more efficiently. Much of this involves clever and/or nerdy application of economic ideas. Below are a few of the ideas we've not just talked abut but have actually implemented. Move money efficiently The most wildly successful experiment -- which, after over three years of daily use has…
Today marks the 25th birthday of the original Macintosh. Ars Technica has a decent piece with various Ars editors reminiscing about their favorite Macs of all time . Reading the piece got me thinking about my own experiences with the Macintosh. My history with the Mac goes back to 1988, when I was four years old. My father purchased a Mac Plus and, shortly thereafter, a LaserWriter Plus. I don't…
Five minutes of cleaning is actually a lot. Long ago, I asked myself, "why does my room get messy?" I hypothesized a number of potential explanations -- the natural increase in entropy of a given system, when things are "put away" they are necessarily not available for use and this creates an unstable equilibrium, etc, etc -- and started an in-depth analysis of this problem. This was actually…
Reason, the best damn magazine you're not reading (assuming, of course, that you don't already read it), has a decent piece today about liberals and libertarians . This quotation by professor Jacob Levy from McGill University struck me as particularly important: "If our core liberalism—if our roots in the struggle of common law against the absolutist king, or in Locke, or in Montesquieu, or in the…
Less than an hour ago, walking from my office in the West Village to the Q train in Union Square, I heard constant shouts, cheers, and chants; passed a young woman singing the Star-Spangled Banner; and saw more smiling faces than I've ever seen on a New York street -- or any street, for that matter. My wait for the train was accompanied by still more screams and yelps of joy, as each new group of…
Our system worked today. The majority of the House of Representatives -- which was always intended to be the branch most responsive to the will of the people -- rejected what would have been a massive and disasterous government bailout. I'm happy to say that I was wrong. Last week when I read about Paulson's initial proposal for the bailout, I thought that the backing of the White House and the…
After months of delays, false promises, and distractions, Unschooled is back. Since I last posted, dear reader (readers, even?), much has happened: I graduated from engineering school, started my first full-time job, and moved into a new apartment. There was more, of course, but this site has never been about the nitty-gritty details of my life, and just because I updated the banner graphic does…
It's hard to list all the things that are terrible about this idea: A ban on the sale of cigarettes to anyone who does not pay for a government smoking permit has been proposed by Health England, a ministerial advisory board. The idea is the brainchild of the board's chairman, Julian Le Grand, who is a professor at the London School of Economics and was Tony Blair's senior health adviser. In a…
I've been reading this story every Christmas for nearly a decade now. To properly enjoy it, you need to appreciate the historical context: When this was published in December of '97, Apple hadn't released the iMac, let alone the iPod or iPhone. A year earlier at Macworld Boston, Jobs had been booed on stage when he introduced the new Apple/Microsoft partnership. The clones had been killed. Apple's…
The New York Times has a tragic piece about what it's like to be imprisoned for 15 years and then be exonerated based on DNA evidence. The article is unsurprisingly depressing, but it serves as an important reminder for us to think deeply about how we treat and prosecute citizens suspected or accused of committing heinous crimes. I took particular note of these two paragraphs: After repeated…
This piece by Christopher Hitchens is deeply moving: I was having an oppressively normal morning a few months ago, flicking through the banality of quotidian e-mail traffic, when I idly clicked on a message from a friend headed "Seen This?" The attached item turned out to be a very well-written story by Teresa Watanabe of the Los Angeles Times. It described the death, in Mosul, Iraq, of a young…
Jim Harper over at the Cato blog thinks the anti-immigration opinions held by many in this country are in fact only "weakly held" and will fade if presented with the correct arguments. Having watched this issue, and having heard from lots of angry people, I know that anti-immigrant views are a classic weakly held opinion. Angry as people are about the rule of law and “coming to this country the…
This afternoon, President Bollinger gave a speech that can only be called rousing and inspirational. Watch it here: part 1 , part 2 (it's unfortunate that the video doesn't capture the response of the several thousand students who were watching out on the lawn; needless to say the atmosphere was electric). Interestingly enough, just two hours later, Prezbo -- miraculously -- showed up to teach…
Seen just now while walking to the library: Bwog coverage here , for those who don't know what's going on.
Even the exceedingly dull reader will note that I have made some changes to the site. The most obvious of course is that I've goofed around a bit with the site's general look, for no reason other than that I had a lot of important things to get done, and so I needed a way to delay doing them. Dinking around with Unschooled's CSS proved to be a nice distraction, and as a bonus I can even feel…
I remember a time when when this stuff was only to be found in dystopian novels: SHENZHEN, China, Aug. 9 — At least 20,000 police surveillance cameras are being installed along streets here in southern China and will soon be guided by sophisticated computer software from an American-financed company to recognize automatically the faces of police suspects and detect unusual activity. Starting this…
This seemed like the best way to celebrate: More photos of me looking bewildered after the jump. For the curious, my quotation is from Jefferson's first inaugural address: Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this…
Yesterday afternoon I took off from work early to go stand in line for four hours to get my grubby little hands on an iPhone, a device I've been waiting for in one form or another for nearly eight years. Because I can't stand to stay away from it for too long, this post will be in the form of an off-the-top-of-my-head list of thoughts about this beautiful -- beautiful -- device: Waiting in line…
One of the better policy initiatives I've seen in recent months: Steve Ahlenius, president of the McAllen Chamber of Commerce, sent out an e-mail to 140 media outlets nationwide Tuesday morning with the subject line: “McAllen, Texas calls for wall around Washington D.C.” “We feel the need to protect ourselves from bad legislation, bad ideas and a waste of tax money,” Ahlenius wrote. “A wall around…
I don't know how long this has been around, but I just stumbled upon it recently. The market-liberals [1] at the Cato Institute have compiled an interactive map of botched police raids . It appears to be both well-researched and thorough, and shows that the scourge of police invasions on innocents and nonviolent offenders is not limited to the years under the Bush administration. Meanwhile, Cato's…
What do you do after you have rounded up "enemy combatants" from around the world, imprisoned them for a few years, and then determined that they are, in fact, not terrorists at all? What do you do if returning them to their "home" countries would most likely lead to their torture or even execution? The New York Times today has a fascinating look behind the scenes of this whole nightmare: The men,…
By environmental design, I do not mean environmental engineering or anything related with environmentalism. Rather, I want to talk about designing our environment -- that is, the physical world in which we live -- to make our lives better. I have not traditionally put much thought into designing my living space. Sure, I set up my room nicely (both functionally and to a lesser extent…