The New 30-Something - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/02/style/financial-independence-30s.html <comment><USER2> > _Then there are the free services. Ms. Palmer, who is 39 and lives near > Washington, D.C., said that the free 20 to 25 hours of child care she > receives every month from her parents contributed to her family's decision > to have a third child. If she were to pay a babysitter, Ms. Palmer estimates > it would add up to around $6,000 a year._

This kinda bugs me, not only because inter-generational child rearing has been the norm for most of history rather than something unique that deadbeat millenials are relying on, but also because it propagates the belief that anything you don't pay for with money is considered "free" (the bad "free", as in "deadbeat" or "moocher").

There's the whole debate that GDP is the wrong measure precisely because it doesn't measure these kinds of "unpaid services", but I prefer to look at it another way: a "livable" city is more than what restaurants and bars are around, but also who your neighbors and social connections are (I've heard this described as alternative forms of capital beyond financial capital like social and cultural capital).

It's not that millenials are killing the babysitter industry, it's more millenials are reaching the age where they understand the whole "it takes a village" folk wisdom.

<comment><USER3> "It takes a village" has really bitten for me, I've seen just how bad it is without. Moving to the Bay Area, far away from any parental help, seemed so great when I was 25. Now I have children that I am raising without family help, while trying to do well in my own career, can just be totally emotionally crushing sometimes.

<comment><USER4> I'm deep in that too, right now. My partner badly wanted one last kid, and knowing we were already resource-tight and having no family around, I was very hesitant. Logistically I knew it would be a disaster but I agreed to it. I love the hell out of this kid, but "totally emotionally crushing" is apt. I'm not new to this, but I can only do so much. Working my job, being a stay at home dad, and having to maintain our relationship (plus my relationship with my son and adopted son) is genuinely outside of my ability. But it's what we have to do here. Expensive city, no connections, 3 kids.

I know it's stupid to go into it knowing it'll be hard, and I can't complain. I'm not. This is just what it takes, and I went into it knowing it would be temporary. Kids get a lot easier as they get older.

A lot of things that are worth it in life take a lot of work. I'll feel better in a few years. At the moment I feel like I'm dying.

At any rate, here's to things getting easier. I'm sure our hard work will pay off soon enough.

<comment><USER3> It's the relationship with the significant other that suffers the most IMHO, and I think most people ignore that bit. You can just about find hours in the day to work a job and get the kids fed and to bed, but then you have < 1 hr before you have to go to bed and do it all again tomorrow.

It feels like mine is on pause until the kids grow old enough to be left to their own devices, taking their own baths, brushing their own teeth, reading their own bedtime stories etc etc.

<comment><USER4> > 1 hr before you have to go to bed and do it all again tomorrow

This is very real. Sometimes I sit to do some more work before bed and think wow, I'll finish this... Go to bed... And wake up as early as I can to work some more. Then my son will wake up, and I'll be with him until 6 or so in the evening. While he naps I work more. Rinse and repeat. It's a gauntlet.

Things being on pause isn't really a bad thing at all, but it certainly feels bad in the moment. I have two 9 year olds though, and it's true. Eventually they want to read before bed on their own, they want to play on their own during the day, and the pressure is off. There's a lot more time.

I also have the luxury that on weekends, during the day my older kids will play with the baby and give me a bit of a break. Sometimes even for an hour or so. It's usually an opportunity to catch up on work, but it's often badly needed and a big relief.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was born in NYC to Haitian immigrants, if you didn't know Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. I grew up in a neighborhood with a lot of West Indian first generation children, a common theme for us was that we were "tougher" than the white kids who grew up in NYC because they lived easy lives. It was typical short sighted thinking that young kids do.

I wonder what that kid would say now after reading this article. A lot of the people I grew up with went to crappy colleges. I did too, and we were too broke to even think about tuition so PELL grants funded my education. College Textbooks? You mean PDFs from The Pirate Bay.

I made it out and got a nice job in tech, but like many of my peers it is I who support my parents. I pay their health insurance, I lend them money for groceries, and I'm financing my dad's chemotherapy. Do you know how hard it is to save up for a house (on the west coast !!) knowing you'll never get a windfall from Mom and Dad? When in fact they are a liability budget wise?

I wish more articles were written about this side of the coin, it is my experience that many young people, especially minorities, are shouldering the burden of "elder care" earlier than they ever thought they would.

<comment> david-cako >I made it out and got a nice job in tech, but like many of my peers it is I who support my parents. I pay their health insurance, I lend them money for groceries, and I'm financing my dad's chemotherapy. Do you know how hard it is to save up for a house (on the west coast !!) knowing you'll never get a windfall from Mom and Dad? When in fact they are a liability budget wise?

I can only imagine how difficult that is. This is an interesting distinction between western and eastern culture too. I wonder if the obligation to take care of your parents is less pronounced in eastern households that are wealthier.

<comment><USER6> It's the opposite. The obligation to take care of your parents is definitely more pronounced in eastern households. See filial piety [1]. I'm Chinese and grew up in both Asia and the US. First of all, wealthy Chinese is a pretty small minority, so most working 20-somethings and 30-somethings are paying a portion of their paychecks to parents to support them. For those lucky enough to come from wealthy families, most are still expected to care for them in other non-monetary ways. For example in America many Chinese immigrants of the older generation can't drive; taking time off your work and taking your parents to their doctor's appointments is often a responsibility you have. (which of course means you can't live far away from them; there's going to be more and more work caring for them as they grow older.)

Like GP, I also grew up in a lower income family and made it out well in tech. My only advantage is that I'm older and started working 15 years ago, which lead to being able to afford to buy a house during the lowest years of the housing market (2010-12) so I have a really low mortgage in crazy bay area. I don't know how anyone in the bay would be able to save up for a house if they have to support their parents in addition to paying their own rent.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filial_piety](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filial_piety)

<comment><USER7> The question was about wealthier eastern households, not western versus eastern. I too wonder about the differences between richer and poorer eastern households.

<comment><USER8> What comes to mind is the stories about "parachute kids" with (relatively) wealthy parents that sent the kid abroad, ostensibly for study. They end up in an extreme form of latchkey existence - still Eastern in intent, but living largely alone and with few obligations, they tend to be adrift at a much earlier stage of life, leading to occasional news stories about crimes that earn prison time, or of "little emperors and empresses" that have been spoiled and have difficulty adjusting to interaction with the rest of the world.

The film "Better Luck Tomorrow" explored this - not specifically the parachute kid status, but the trouble that overprivileged Asian teens get into. It's fictionalized but also based on some real events.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What the article doesnt mention is college debt. I know tons of people who have college debt for degrees that pay absolutely nothing. Its debt they will never escape, and im guessing mom and dad feel guilty about it to some extent.

I came from a poor family, so college wasnt much of an option. My mom and dad had lived their whole lives under check cashing shysters and credit card debt until dad hurt his back and went on disability/heroin. Mom did the best she could at the local truckstop diner where i spent most of my time after school. College was never an option and looking back im glad it wasnt.

I grew up to become a damn good diesel engine tech. not the best, but i walk out of the shop every day feeling like I actually did something meaningful. Some days im even making cut-rate lawyer money. but I see college kids at my local bar, partly because thats an aesthetic for college kids my age, but also because its a necessity. They buy a round of el-cheapo beers and sit in the corner on their phones for an hour. They rarely tip or if they do its some weird math that comes out to screw over the barman, but its hardly their fault.

I bought a Sam Adams for one of these guys who was fired from mcdonalds for showing up to work late just _once._ He had a masters degree in business management. He came home to see his prius getting repossessed, and decided to just decided to keep on walking past his apartment and down to the local watering hole. His plan was to ride out an eviction and move back in with his folks.

<comment><USER10> They definitely mention it!

"Those who do not have parental assistance in their 30s, however, continue to be at a disadvantage. "They are grappling with paying off student-loan debt, their savings might not be as strong because of that, and many are taking care of other family members," said Iimay Ho, 32, the executive director at Resource Generation, an organization that works with people ages 18 to 35 with wealth or class privilege to engage on issues of inequality."

...

"For those without parental cash at the ready, there's often some kind of debt hangover that holds them back in significant ways. Roger Quesada, 34, calls his $65,000 of student-loan debt to Sallie Mae, which incurs $400 a month in interest payments alone, "a jail sentence." A lapse in his payments ruined his credit, he said, and has hampered his financial and career aspirations."

And I feel for it, too. Compounding debt instead of compounding interest. Reminds me of a very relevant Onion headline:

"Lazy Poor Person Has Never Earned Passive Income From Stock Dividends A Day In His Life"

[https://local.theonion.com/lazy-poor-person-has-never- earned...](https://local.theonion.com/lazy-poor-person-has-never-earned- passive-income-from-s-1832537497)

<comment><USER11> > savings might not be as strong because of that,

Is incredibly tone deaf way to describe people living paycheck to paycheck.

<comment><USER12> Paying off loans doesn't also mean you are also living paycheck-to-paycheck. Even if so, this article is well researched and has sparked good discussion - accusing the author of being tone deaf, with no other contribution or criticism is not very nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Mary Wallace, a real estate agent... said that in 20 years she has rarely > seen anyone in their 30s who did not have family help or an inheritance for > their down payment.

This is the unwritten law of California first-time home ownership: you are waiting for your parents to downsize and cash in, or just to straight up die and inherit their house. You do not just get a job in CA and buy a home. The article also talks about the US in general, throwing around "six figures" as some indication of being financially safe. In CA, that is just not true.

I would not have a home without significant assistance from my parents. I can't imagine how it would be if I was saddled with large student loans as well (came from the UK where college education was cheaper) or had a job where the health insurance could leave me one bad situation away from bankruptcy.

Even if wealth distribution is possible, it comes with its own hurdles: early wealth distribution leads to questions about how elder care is going to get paid for, late wealth distribution leads to questions about how stunted the career and life development of the child is.

I think this is the new normal, and will be for generations past us, but I wonder what it will mean for G8 countries. I think step one is abandoning the idea that if you try hard you're going to live better than your parents. You might, you might not. It's not a given anymore.

<comment><USER13> Why is CA so expensive? Is it something intrinsic to the land (weather, natural features, etc.) or is it something more _variable_ , like job & entertainment opportunity? If it's the latter (and I suspect it is), it is a solvable problem, at least for most G8 countries, since there is a lot of un(der)-developed areas out there.

 _I would not have a home without significant assistance from my parents._

I don't know your specific case, but on average, you could have bought a home without assistance if you wanted, just maybe not when & where you bought.

<comment><USER3> It's the jobs. You want to work at Google, you work in CA. You want to work in movies, you work in CA. There are various environmental factors (like the weather) and economic factors (like locking in property taxes when you buy) that keep people in their homes, stunting inventory.

Yeah, I _could_ buy a house somewhere else, just like I _could_ give up on a fulfilling career. But I don't think people are willing to spend the majority of their waking hours in a job they don't like so they can have a house, given the alternative of having a job they do and renting. Everything is a life choice, and home ownership is not be all and end all, but I think it seems very wrong that the dichotomy of career vs home-ownership is as harsh as it is.

<comment><USER14> It's not the jobs.

In New York you can get an apartment in Jackson Heights for $200k and take the F train to work.

[https://www.redfin.com/NY/Corona/112-50-Northern- Blvd-11368/...](https://www.redfin.com/NY/Corona/112-50-Northern- Blvd-11368/unit-6B/home/113180232)

In the Bay Area it's expensive near job centers but it's still expensive 40 miles away. The sprawling mess is too low density to sensibly cover with trains so people end up with insane highway commutes.

California's problem is property taxes. Tax people fairly - not based on the time they joined the class of property owners - and our problems go away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _"I think millennials need to get past this narrative they've made it on their own and 'I pulled myself up by my boot straps,'" Mr. Isaacs said. "It hides all the kinds of ways they have been privileged by their race or parental help."_

I started to fire a snarky comment about how nice it must be to fit into the category of millennial who have enjoyed the listed privileges, but instead I'll just adopt the position that I am not the "target demographic" here, and maybe that's why after reading that entire article, finding _this_ remark as the closing statement caused me to involuntarily furrow a brow.

<comment><USER16> I've met a member of every class that's lied about "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps" (by the way, isn't that meant to be an ironic paradox?).

From the rich white male Boomer to an immigrant Chinese business owner, everyone seems to feel the need to make more of their struggle than it was. Like, it was already a struggle, why lie and make it seem more so? You started your business by working 12 hour days funded by the pennies in your pocket... And the 300k business loan someone was willing to give you on the basis of your bachelor's in business, which meant a hell of a lot in 1957. Or the classic "came into America on a boat with seven dollars in my pocket," not mentioning the family safety net back home or the fact that the 7$ was more like 7,000 and this was 1965.

But it's obvious why people do that, because people have been doing it for ten thousand years and it's nothing new. We like to feel important, and if our truth doesn't make us feel important we'll lie a bit until we feel important again.

So I'm tired of old people making flippant statements like above about millennials that are either completely off base or simply applicable to every human on the planet, for as long as we've been able to talk. Allow me to engage in my own psychological fallacy - I feel like with enough years under your belt, you should just know that's how we work.

<comment><USER17> I concur. What irks me the most is when the backstory contains unmentioned unethical elements.

I come across several people in business who all gave the "oh it was so hard in the beginning" while not mentioning their dark pattern websites (people unwittingly buying subscription), wolf-of-wall-street v1 of their broking business, or outright money laundering.

There needs to be a catchy phrase for the "I had it so hard" story.

<comment><USER18> 4 Yorkshiremen (from the Monty Python sketch)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7wM0QC5LE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7wM0QC5LE)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This all rings true, but it doesn't have to make you feel like America is broken. I'm of South Asian descent, where finances between generations are even more intertwined. In America we've created a narrative of one generation being completely free of the last, and when we don't fulfill it we feel shame. Like many destructive narratives our society has, it might be time to let this one go.

<comment><USER20> "let go" the notion of individual freedom, and replace it with your parents having control via financing over your life for most of it. Yeah I'll pass. Alternative proposal - vote for parties who will reverse intergenerational inequality: reform the housing market, dispose of the (corporate and literal property) rentiers, introduce a wealth tax, equalise pensions (it's insane that one generation is going to get pensions and the next basically isn't).

"Let go of the idea that you can live as an independent human" have a word with yourself.

<comment><USER16> >Let go of the idea that you can live as an independent human" have a word with yourself.

I assume your family has a couple generations of America under their belt? If so, I'm not surprised you find the statement your op to taste bad. It's fundamentally opposed to the American value system (though as this article indicates, at odds with the reality of America today).

Are they wrong? If you had time to apply for colleges because you had housing in high school and didn't have to work all day to pay for food and housing, are you truly independent? If you didn't have to fetch your own water every morning and hunt your food? Maybe you think I'm taking the argument too far, but I see where they are coming from. True "freedom" is a bit of a myth, and shouldn't it be? Do you want to be the sole party responsible for ensuring your medicine isn't laced with arsenic?

In any case, other cultures have taken on the idea of familial responsibility and wealth to great success by their own measures. Just because it is different, doesn't mean it's bad.

<comment><USER20> I'm not even American, and for the record I got a couple of K a year at uni which I'd have survive without and never a dime since. Having to live under the control of your parents (which is fundamentally what happens when they hold the purse strings) past the age of 18-21 depending on taste is messed up. I know plenty of people from both camps and it's definitely bad for you to have your parents controlling your life past 21. It's different when you're younger, but even that is painful - at 15 I was ready to operate independently and my parents having some control over me until 18 probably messed up our relationship a lot. Not everything which is cultural is also arbitrary, as humanity advances we tend to promote individual freedom to the maximum extent we can support (and this is coming from a lefty). This isn't even bringing it how it will perpetuate class-systems, even for the beneficiaries I think it's incredibly harmful.

<comment><USER21> > couple of K a year at uni which I'd have survive without and never a dime > since

And tuition ?

> your parents controlling your life past 21.

I think you have some kind of archaic idea of what parents supporting their child looks like. My parents let me pursue my dream (tbf conveniently it was in STEM) and funded my undergrad and masters. It cost them their life's savings, but it comes with an understanding that I will support my brother's education and we will support them in retirement.

I've been away from home for 8 years at this point, and I can't think of any major restriction on me, as a result of being financially dependent on my parents.

As a family, it is a win-win. My parents get a better retirement through me, both me and my brother can get educated debt free and if anything goes wrong, it would delay our plans but won't destroy us financially the way a $100k loan would. (my parents' annual income is ~12k)

> at 15 I was ready to operate independently

If you still believe that, you might have some maturing to do. Every person I've known at 15 has been too young to live independently without screwing themselves over in some way or form.

___________________

> individual freedom to the maximum extent

I have to ask. What are these things that you felt you couldn't do when you were financially dependent on your parents / living with them.

<comment><USER22> > I think you have some kind of archaic idea of what parents supporting their > child looks like. My parents let me pursue my dream (tbf conveniently it was > in STEM) and funded my undergrad and masters.

Your experience is not necessarily universal.

> I have to ask. What are these things that you felt you couldn't do when you > were financially dependent on your parents / living with them.

I'm from East Texas and I know of many families back home that have a "our money, our roof, our rules" mindset. It's not uncommon for these parents to use the threat of "do what we say or we're pulling your support" to control them. For instance "We don't like your girlfriend, break up with her or we're cutting your support", or "We'll only pay for your college if you major in what we want".

I've also seen these families impose curfews on their adult children, prevent them from drinking at home, prevent them from having certain hobbies or socializing with certain people, etc.

Myself and many of my peers moved away from home and became financially independent from our parents to avoid this situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This strikes quite true to me. When we were between one apartment lease and buying a house, my wife, daughter, and I moved in with my parents. My mom stayed home with our daughter for almost a year, and my wife's mom did the same for another year. We are also considering having a third child, in large part because my parents live 5 minutes away and provide a lot of free child care.

But I question whether this is "new." None of this would be unusual in the least in Bangladesh, where my family is from. I strongly suspect that it's not new in the US either, or at least was only unusual compared to a status quo that existed only for a blip of time during the 20th century.

<comment><USER24> >I strongly suspect that it's not new in the US either, or at least was only unusual compared to a status quo that existed only for a blip of time during the 20th century.

You're entirely correct. I'll go a step further and say it never even went away--at least in my experience as a child of lower middle class White baby boomer parents in the South.

I have a great uncle on my mom's side who stayed at home while he finished college and then him and his wife lived with his parents for a while after he graduated.

My dad's oldest brother and his wife lived with their parents for a while.

My dad's youngest brother lived with his parents for years.

My grandparents eventually moved in with my dad and his wife--partially because they were getting too old to maintain a house, but also to help him afford a new house after he'd gone through a bankruptcy.

Both sets of grandparents also provided my parents with free childcare, and my parents and aunts and uncles all borrowed plenty of money from my grandparents over the years.

I have many friends who've had similar experiences.

<comment><USER25> I think the solid, seemingly disconnected "nuclear family" is an interesting mythic tale in the American Dream that is an accident of consumer marketing more than anything else. It sold more homes, it sold more goods, so it became a useful myth to marketers. In reality it never existed, not even in the mythic 50s where it got so ensconced in television sitcoms and advertising.

<comment><USER26> Depends:

> Historians Alan Macfarlane and Peter Laslett postulated that nuclear > families have been a primary arrangement in England since the 13th century. > This primary arrangement was different than the normal arrangements in > Southern Europe, in parts of Asia, and the Middle East where it was common > for young adults to remain in or marry into the family home. In England > multi-generational households were uncommon because young adults would save > enough money to move out, into their own household once they married. [...]

> Critics of the term "traditional family" point out that in most cultures and > at most times, the extended family model has been most common, not the > nuclear family,[26] though it has had a longer tradition in England[27] than > in other parts of Europe and Asia which contributed large numbers of > immigrants to the Americas. The nuclear family became the most common form > in the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s.[28]

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_family](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_family)

See also:

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_family](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_family)

<comment><USER24> Be careful about what research you look at when looking into the history of the Nuclear family. It's a very politically charged topic, and a lot of what you'll find is more of an agenda driven defense of the nuclear family (or the opposite) than an explorative scholarly work.

It's difficult to find a trustworthy source on the matter if you're just doing a quick google search.

Probably the primary reason that multi-generational households were less common in England people married much later there than in the rest of Europe (Laslett does mention this in _The World We Have Lost_ ).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> >On average, each millennial parent receives $11,011 per year in combined financial support and unpaid labor, the 2017 TD Ameritrade Millennial Parents Survey found, for an annual total of $253 billion in America.

I wish they had separated the unpaid labor from financial support. Grandparents helping raise the kids is a tradition as old as time; the labor portion is not the surprising part here.

<comment><USER28> That did seem like a really weird framing. It seems like the corollary article would be. "Family ties eroding, grandparents no longer spending time with grandkids"

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This comment from the NYT comments section captures my reaction well. Note that the subject of the criticism is the article, not millenials:

> I find the tone of this article just stunning. Since when is there a > sacrosanct right to live in the most expensive housing markets in the > country? NYC is not newly expensive - it has always been expensive. When I > graduated from college many years ago, I got a job in Manhattan, but > certainly couldn't afford to live there. So I did what most people in my > situation did: I lived where I could afford and commuted to work over an > hour each way on public transportation. This is hardly a radical proposition > except to those who somehow think they are entitled to have what they want > when they want it. Sometimes you have to learn to defer gratification. The > easiest time to do this is when you are young. After 8 years of saving, I > was able to make a down payment on a house. 4 years after that I finished > paying off my student loans. There is great value in learning to live within > one's means and I am grateful that my parents found it more important to > foster self-reliance than to insulate me from disappointment.

<comment><USER30> really? It reads like the subject of the criticism is millenials...

I find the tone of the criticism stunning, even if it were about the article and not millenials. The article is laying out how millenials have it different than previous generations. Yes NYC was always expensive but even now places that are 1 hour commute are out of reach for your average 30 something. It's tough to say when the commentor came up but the article is painting a picture that the game has changed and it isn't as easy as it once was to delay gratification for 8 years because it's more like double that amount of time. At that point we need to start asking questions to understand if this is sustainable.

<comment><USER29> > really? It reads like the subject of the criticism is millenials...

It's quite explicitly a criticism of the article's tone, which suggests millennials should feel entitled to certain luxuries. This is markedly different than arguing that millennials hold an entitlement attitude.

> The article is laying out how millenials have it different than previous > generations. Yes NYC was always expensive but even now places that are 1 > hour commute are out of reach for your average 30 something.

Perhaps that is the case the article means to make, but it supports itself with anecdotes about how a down-on-her-luck millennial was able to buy a $400K San Diego condo on the beach thanks to a $40K gift from her parents. That might sound reasonable to a New Yorker, but to the rest of the country that is incredibly tone deaf.

This isn't dunking on millennials—I'm a millennial in my lower 30s and I come from a lower middle class background. I'm renting downtown in a major US city, and I'm saving to buy property, so I'm very much the demographic in question. Still, I can't imagine expecting my parents to help financially (they didn't help with college either). The economy is perhaps worse, but the salaries in the article are still perfectly manageable if you don't have to go out to eat every week or take annual international vacations or live in the hottest neighborhoods.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> tyler- Seems like most articles written on this subject assume young people come from "well-off enough" families that can support them, even if they themselves are broke. It seems like "my family can support me" is universally accepted as truth for such people in those situations.

Are there any articles or studies done on young people from working-class families or families that aren't affluent enough to support them?

<comment><USER31> Rich kids are very overrepresented in journalism. Perhaps because the wages are so bad for much of it that anyone without a decent support system/trust fund can't afford to live in a place like New York City or London on a journalist's salary.

There's been a fair bit written about this:

[https://www.theguardian.com/media/media- blog/2018/apr/29/jou...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/media- blog/2018/apr/29/journalism-class-private-education)

[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2008/apr/07/pressandpublis...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2008/apr/07/pressandpublishing4)

[https://mumbrella.com.au/journalism-is-becoming-a- profession...](https://mumbrella.com.au/journalism-is-becoming-a-profession- for-only-the-rich-so-why-wont-anyone-talk-about-it-535796)

[https://www.cjr.org/special_report/journalism- class.php/](https://www.cjr.org/special_report/journalism-class.php/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I can't understand the tone of this article-- is there something inherently wrong with receiving parental help? What's wrong with family members helping each other? It's part of being in a family, people of your own blood helping, protecting, and lifting each other up. In an article slighting millennials for claiming to "pull themselves up by the bootstraps", it's even weirder to look in the NYT comments section filled with boomers talking down at struggling millennials while bragging about how they themselves worked 8 jobs, saved 10 years for a Honda Accord, trekked 5 miles in the snow to get to work.

<comment><USER33> Yes. In a market economy it is wildly unfair to take family assistance because many people do not have access to it.

<comment><USER34> Life IS unfair.

<comment><USER35> Recognizing that fact, many people spend quite a lot of time, thought, and energy to make it less so.

<comment><USER36> If make it less so means reducing personal freedom to the point of regulating how much time a grandmother can take care of it's grandchildren, I really strongly disagree with that vision.

<comment><USER37> I believe the solution is probably more along the lines of taxing everyone fairly, and using some of the funds to provide free or affordable childcare to everyone who wants/needs it. Likewise with other forms of family support/advantages. Provide alternatives for people who don't have things by birth-lottery.

So you can still have grandma watch your kid all you like, while the person who has no living relatives can still have a kid and hold a job by taking advantage of subsidized daycare.

<comment><USER38> And under that system grandmother could be paid for the value she provides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> There are a lot of problems---namely: debt, cost of living, and third-world immigration---that this generation has to face.

That being said, we are still probably the second-richest generation _in the history of the world_. Look at the squalor people lived in only 80 or 100 years ago: whole families in one-bedroom houses with no central heat or A/C, a chamberpot in the corner of the room, wood-burning stove providing all heat and cooking, and almost certain death by most diseases. If they wanted to start a business, they'd have to save enough capital to start a brick-and- mortar enterprise in a local market.

We have the ability to buy a $500 computer and start a business or learn a new skill from anywhere. We have access to wondrous modern healthcare (yes, which gov't interference has increased the price of, but the quality is nonetheless excellent). Cars are much better than they used to be---your 10-year old Japanese car with power windows will run until the bumpers fall off, and then probably keep going.

I'm certainly nowhere near where I want to be financially, but perhaps I'm striking an optimistic tone today because I watched _They Shall Not Grow Old_ over the weekend. One of the veterans talks about how he was retreating after an offensive and saw a fellow 16-year-old writhing on the ground in pain after being blown to bits. He knew the boy was done for, and put him out of his misery. By comparison to what they endured, we live in Heaven-on-Earth.

</comment><comment><USER40> There's some really good research in this article and then some really poorly researched topics and it seems like the entire thing was written with an agenda to please an anti-millenial audience. Specifically, an agenda to prove that millenials are given way more than previous generations (especially boomers) with really poor research and a really shaky narrative.

This one part shows it pretty clearly:

>n the television show "Thirtysomething," which aired from 1987 to 1991, the all-white cast of characters seemed to be economically emancipated from their parents, who rarely factored into the story lines. Today's series about 30-somethings portray a decade that seems far less adult, at least by traditional standards. (Think "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" or "New Girl.")

<comment><USER21> A bit off topic but ,is it just me or have articles by the NYT become more and more ideology driven over the last few years ?

The whole process seems to be structured around finding data to support their preconceived notions, rather than using the data and research to craft the hypothesis.

I hate Trump as much as the next guy on HN, but his criticism of the MSM isn't totally unfounded. I used to look at NYT and WSJ are paragons of journalism, and they've routinely disappointed over the last few years.

Many youtube channels seem to be a lot better researched than these 'prestigious' outlets. Channels like CGPGrey and Kurzgesagt give much better common-man explanations of complex problems. On the other hand, niche channels like Caspian Report and Healthcare Triage stick to things they have expertise in, and make no attempts to water down the news or risk losing nuance in the process.

With big outlets, it is hard to calibrate an article to account for the implicit bias of the outlet itself. When it is instead a youtube personality who you feel like you know better, it is easy to identify the lens through with information is being delivered and build trust over time.

<comment><USER41> I agree, and actually I cancelled my subscription and wrote the NYT a letter to the editor over this. I ran an analysis on how many of the front page main headlines were about Trump in the year after his election, versus being about Obama, and it was ridiculous. I don't have the exact numbers handy but something like 2-3x as many articles written about Trump vs. Obama and basically all negative. I get it, the guy is a clown show, but at a certain point not all of his antics aren't newsworthy anymore and the media just comes across as obsessed. If anything they're just playing into the opposition narrative that somehow he's a good guy who is unfairly being persecuted by the media and that you can't trust them.

<comment><USER42> How much worse does an administration need to be before this amount of coverage is acceptable to you?

I don't think the potential for audience fatigue is a valid reason to start ignoring a president continuously embroiled in _legitimate_ controversy causing irreparable harm to our nation.

You found your limit, I get that, but it's the administration who exceeded your capacity with their newsworthy actions - not the media.

<comment><USER43> I hate how imprecise and tabloidesque a lot of the "reputable" coverage is. There's a lot to cover. And by any reasonable standard Trump should probably have been embroiled in an impeachment process already. But does that really mean speculation about the Mueller investigation is news and not speculation? I don't think so.

<comment><USER42> I hate everything you're pointing out as well, but it seems more a product of news and journalism in the 21st century in general - not specific to coverage of the 45th president and/or his administration.

My impression is that quality journalism has been defunded into the toilet now that newspapers and magazines have been displaced by click-bait websites desperate for ad revenue competing with randos spreading nonsense via facebook and twitter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I can't understand the tone of this article-- is there something inherently wrong with receiving parental help? What's wrong with family members helping each other? It's part of being in a family, people of your own blood helping, protecting, and lifting each other up. In an article slighting millennials for claiming to "pull themselves up by the bootstraps", it's even weirder to look in the NYT comments section filled with boomers talking down at struggling millennials while bragging about how they themselves worked 8 jobs, saved 10 years for a Honda Accord, trekked 5 miles in the snow to get to work. I mean is there some joke flying entirely over my head that I'm missing?

<comment><USER44> No, poor quality American journalism just likes to "re-discover" how basic things work (like family) that have been figured out in the rest of the world for centuries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> It makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Property owners use their powers to increase prices on non-owners, efficiently siphoning off as much of their income as they can. In a lot of cases this amounts to parents siphoning off their children's income, so why wouldn't they have both the ability and obligation to kick back that income? Seems like one of the main effects will be greater interfamily inequality.

The housing trick only works in some places though, so the best way to break free of this is to move to a 2nd or 3rd tier city and try to make it on your own. Many thing (jobs, free parental childcare, aesthetic preferences etc) make this not possible for many.

</comment><comment><USER46> Is this article implying that previous generations did not have assistance from family? Were families too poor to help in previous generations, but now are better off? I'm a bit confused on the take-away here. Instead this reads as a smug piece about how lucky some families are to enable their children to live better lives. The article isn't even framed as a matter of them being lucky or not. It's as if we're supposed to feel bad that these people aren't making enough to support themselves.

I certainly didn't have any help from my parents. So hearing that my peers did during all the pivotal moments in their lives certainly feels heavy.

<comment><USER3> I think most Boomers didn't have financial support, and they didn't need it: their wealth accumulated at a faster rate than large expenses (college, healthcare, housing) grew.

Those large expenses are now almost all exhibiting bubble-like costs, but probably aren't bubbles. They're the new normal. Millenials, and at least the generation after them, will need financial support to live similarly to the environments they were raised in.

<comment><USER47> It wasn't so easy for all the boomers. I remember my dad losing his business after he lost a loan during the S&L crisis, and I remember my parents struggling to afford a 3-bedroom house in 1983 at something like a 16% interest rate on the mortgage. And I'm sure they remember gas lines during the 1979 oil crisis, as well, even though I don't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Somethings mentioned in the article are common in Asia.

\- Parents funding their children until they settle down to the extent they're capable of. That's partly why they tend to be frugal to a fault.

\- Grandparents helping raise kids. My great-grandma helped my mom for the first year. Now my mom helps my sister raise my niece. And not to mention, kids and grandparents love being around each other.

If you take a long view, these "millennials" who get assistance from parents will one day help them have a comfortable oldage* and assist their kids in raising families.

* My opinion here is influenced by an old lady who died alone in our apartment complex yesterday. No one should go like that.

</comment><comment><USER49> I think this issue is illustrated in a different way - the asset/wage ratio of the 70's/80's vs today...

To take a yuppie example:

If you went to work for a white shoe law firm or top investment bank right out of graduate school in the 1970's in new york maybe you made ~$30K a year but a really really nice apartment or townhouse cost $150k-$300K so it was a 5x-10x ratio between starting salary and really nice house

Now the houses that sold for $150k-$300K in the 70's sell for like $7.5m - $30m, but those same first year banking/law jobs at top firms pay like $250k so a ratio of 30x - 120x!!!!

<comment><USER50> > Now the houses that sold for $150k-$300K in the 70's sell for like $7.5m - > $30m

I think you're off by an order of magnitude. 432 Park Ave, which is by any account one of the most expensive buildings in NYC, has a 2 bedroom / 2.5 bath apartment listed for just shy of $12 million [0]. In fact, there's only 13, 2-bedroom apartments more expensive than that for sale in Manhattan [5].

In Manhattan, there's currently 134 listings for 2 bedroom apartments with a listing price of under $750k [1], 1596 listings for under $3 million [2], 1998 listings for under $7.5 million, and a total of 2034 listings for all 2 bedrooms currently listed [4].

[0]: [https://streeteasy.com/building/432-park-avenue- new_york/53a](https://streeteasy.com/building/432-park-avenue-new_york/53a)

[1]: [https://streeteasy.com/for- sale/manhattan/status:open%7Cpric...](https://streeteasy.com/for- sale/manhattan/status:open%7Cprice:-750000%7Cbeds:2)

[2]: [https://streeteasy.com/for- sale/manhattan/status:open%7Cpric...](https://streeteasy.com/for- sale/manhattan/status:open%7Cprice:-3000000%7Cbeds:2)

[3]: [https://streeteasy.com/for- sale/manhattan/status:open%7Cpric...](https://streeteasy.com/for- sale/manhattan/status:open%7Cprice:-7500000%7Cbeds:2)

[4]: [https://streeteasy.com/for- sale/manhattan/status:open%7Cbeds...](https://streeteasy.com/for- sale/manhattan/status:open%7Cbeds:2)

[5]: [https://streeteasy.com/for- sale/manhattan/status:open%7Cpric...](https://streeteasy.com/for- sale/manhattan/status:open%7Cprice:12000000-%7Cbeds:2)

<comment><USER49> Nope - if I log into the New York Times and look at the real estate section for Sunday, March 2, 1975 (pg.294 if you have a subscription) you'll see an ad for a 5 bedroom (10 rooms total) on 5th avenue in the 80's for $150K that would be more like $12M today or a whole townhouse in the east 60's (pg.273) for $164k...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> > New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco or Washington, D. > C.

Maybe they need to accept that they can't all live in the cities that they want to.

<comment><USER52> I'm not sure exactly what you're getting at. Should those cities be reserved for the wealthy and their children?

<comment><USER53> No more "reserved" than any other luxury good. They list the most expensive cities in the world and lament not being able to own a home in them. _Of course_ the average person can't buy a house in SF. There's very limited availability and millions more people who want to live in the city than it can support.

No one has a right to live in a super trendy, naturally expensive city.

<comment><USER54> You forget that to many, the point is not to live in trendiness, but to live where the jobs are.

<comment><USER53> There are jobs everywhere though. Billions of people do not live in the cities listed and do just fine. I think the _trendy_ jobs are in these places.

<comment><USER55> I have to live in one of these places to do my career that I trained for (not trendy or super high status). If you could go back in time and say to a student "you can't actually be whatever you want, learn something that is regionally employable" then maybe they could change. Even then with the concentration of jobs in major US cities and contraction in 2nd tier ones you might get it wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> In my 40s so too old to have the "millennial" label, but there definitely seems to have been some kind of generational shift in terms of what's normal. I would be absolutely mortified and ashamed if I had to ask my parents for help with a down payment for a house or for a car, let alone routine bills. They're retired and on fixed income, and in my 30s they were financially just barely getting to that point where they _could_ retire. I think most of my age cohort would say the same thing. I'd rather cut the size of my home in half and drive a 20 year old beater Toyota than depend on my parents, who already spent the prime of their adult lives supporting me.

Not saying the new attitude is wrong, but is seems so foreign to me. I guess my question to a 30 year old whose parents pay their bills is: what would you do if they died suddenly or became unable to continue support? You must have some kind of plan..?

<comment><USER57> Same attitude as you. I wouldn't dare ask my parents for financial help, they've done enough.

I had a coworker whose parents paid for his college. They were low income gov't workers. He gets a good degree and starts raking in the cash and spending like no tomorrow. How could you possible do that and still look your parents in the eye?

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> This article doesn't fit the typical millenial in the HN bubble. Most people _here_ have a prized lottery ticket in their pocket (IT) and consistently want to ignore it. Most times they are in position of helping their parents, not of being helped.

<comment><USER38> It was a lot easier to get that lottery ticket with parental help in the first place. For many commenters here, just having access to a computer before college was a mark of family wealth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> In Hawaii, where housing is physically limited and prices are insane (maybe not like SF but still), a lot of families live with 2 or 3 generations in the same house. It's perfectly normal there, for example, for kids to live with their parents until their late 20's in order to save money, and some live with their parents until they pass away and then they inherit the home and live in it as their own. It's a much more diverse place than the US mainland, and it has a heavy dose of several Asian and other cultures which make it this way (Hawaii is kind of a "stew" rather than a "melting pot" like the mainland).

</comment><comment> throwaway-1283 Living in SF, the very real phenomenon I've noticed is friends who hit late 20s/early 30s, get married, and then leave with varying intentions but many to move closer to their parents (presumably in a cheaper area) so that they can get help raising kids while both continue to work.

This article doesn't really capture the fact that this only works if the 30-somethings move out of SF, NY, LA, etc. to move closer to home (unless those are the places where the parents are already living), which may be an area outside of a major urban job center.

</comment><comment><USER60> > Over half of these millennial parents ... say they have a generalized > anxiety about not earning enough to support themselves and their families.

That's pretty much the entire reason that my wife and I haven't chosen to start trying for children - we're equal earners, and we don't know if we can afford to have her reduce her hours. It would be a choice to lose any current potential savings safety net we have, and to put a huge hit to our mortgage and our already iffy retirement.

</comment><comment><USER61> Various parts of my family are pretty damn wealthy, as far as I can assume. I cut contact. I won't be in any of their wills, I won't have their money.

And I am immensely happy for that. It means that everything I achieve is purely my own, and with people I love dearly. It's a lot less comfortable but it opened me to opportunities I never would have had.

Like other commenters, my nice programming job in tech helped make that happen. We're pretty damn lucky to learn these skills at this time.

</comment><comment><USER62> > More than half (53 percent) of Americans ages 21 to 37 have received some > form of financial assistance from a parent, guardian or family member since > turning 21, according to a 2018 report by Country Financial, a financial > services firm in Bloomington, Ill.

This seems like a weird age range to pick when talking about 30 somethings. Many kids are still in college in their early 20s. I'd be interested in knowing how many people in their 30s are receiving family aid

<comment><USER63> That number wouldn't get as many clicks though

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> The idea it's somehow wrong or shameful to share a house with your parents is a very culture-bound one that doesn't have many objective advantages.

</comment><comment><USER65> > On average, each millennial parent receives $11,011 per year in combined > financial support and unpaid labor

That's the _average_?!?! What's the 90th percentile like, cause I've been sitting on a big fat zero since before I was a legal adult. And I know I'm not alone. These numbers are blowing my mind right now.

<comment><USER66> Literally hundreds of thousands of dollars. Flights on private jets when there's a pressing need for travel. Rent and food and entertainment in major cities, full tuition payments for millennials and, as they reach the point of starting their own families, their children.

Relatedly, one of my strongly-held, but weakly-sourced opinions is that the disparity between anger about financial inequality (wildly inconsistent throughout the country, but not really dominant anywhere) and the level of actual financial inequality (higher than ever before in the history of the country) is largely due to the fact that most people, like you are realizing here, don't actually see that disparity that much. A lot of this wealth transfer is obfuscated (very deliberately!) and laundered through less- explicit mechanisms, like the aforementioned "paying for the ludicrously expensive nightmare that is childcare".

<comment><USER67> Not even close. 90% wealth has a little over a million and even the 99% has a little over 10 million. At 10 million, you can live in perpetuity with $400,000 which is good, but not private jets good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> The intergenerational social contract isn't justified by laissez-faire economics of the baby boomers and globalization.

Don't worry, the uplifting of people in other countries via globalization justifies the disenfranchisement of the younger generations of America.

Of course, we won't talk about the fact that the super rich in all countries are the true beneficiaries of the wealth redistribution of laissez-faire free trade globalization.

The article is spot on though. No jobs, regressive pay (stagnant is for people in gen Y, the Millenials are experiencing shrinking pay both in real and equivalent dollars, while housing, healthcare, education, have skyrocketed.

Consumer spending may buy a bit more than it used to...

But good luck having a house, staying healthy, and getting a job to buy all that plastic crap at target, or even... food.

</comment><comment><USER69> Part of this is the peculiarly American obsession with moving out of your parents' house and living independently as soon as possible. When I was living in India that was difficult for my coworkers to understand.

</comment><comment><USER70> Housing development is one of the highest on the ripe-for-disruption list, maybe second after higher education. Virtually none of the money these people are going into debt to spend on houses generates real value in their lives, they're doing it because they think they're supposed to. If you can figure out how to build cheap housing on cheap land that offers good living standards (doable now that you don't need access to the power grid) then you'll unlock literally trillions in value.

</comment><comment><USER71> Ugh, yet another millenial-bashing thinkpiece constructed from soundbites of consulting agencies and web startups who have a vested interest in pushing a particular storyline. I suppose this sort of thing gets clicks, but it's toxic in a dozen different ways to pretend that these anecdotes and overgeneralities are representative of Americans in their thirties. Not to mention the loaded assumptions that cross-generational support is something unprecedented or negative.

<comment><USER72> Did you even bother to read the article? It is nothing like that. It is really an article about terrible economics young adults have to face.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Why insist on buying in those hyper inflated areas anyway?

Why not go found a millennial utopia in some (as yet) undervalued part of the country, and start creating startups there etc...?

<comment><USER74> Isn't that what Portland/Austin is/was?

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> This article strongly rings of the "Economic Outpatient Care" chapters in The Millionaire Next Door.

</comment><comment><USER76> I remember when I was setting up a home purchase, the bank was really pushing for an extra $30k as a parental gift. They were pretty adamant. They know they can probably get it and they push for it.

<comment><USER77> Genuinely curious: for what? Under what context can the bank push for you to have more money? Debt-to-income? More down payment? Assets after closing? Why should they care?

<comment><USER76> >Debt-to-income? More down payment?

Those two.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> As a (older) millennial, one of the unanticipated benefits of my military service was near financial freedom. When I was 18, all I wanted to do fly airplanes. I didn't realize it would help me have options when I decided I was done flying.

I graduated from a top private university with no debt in 2004. My parents didn't pay for any of it (indeed, they couldn't). I was on a full ROTC scholarship which covered all my tuition and books. It also paid a monthly stipend of ~$350/mo which covered my minimal needs. Room and board was covered by summer jobs like painting houses and some other random scholarships I got from other sources.

No one goes into the military to get rich, but if you are savvy, you can do very well in your 20s. I always had a roommate. I ended up buying two (low cost) houses which I then rented to buddies on the same base. When on deployment, in a combat zone, we got tax free pay – and almost nothing to spend it on. Being a saver anyway, I threw them into index funds and a few tech stocks in the early 2010s. I started a Roth in 2004, maxing my contributions every year since (benefitting from having no loan payments).

When I got out of active service, I went to a very expensive, top graduate school using the GI Bill. It paid for over 80% of tuition, and since I was in the Bay Area, a very generous housing stipend. The rest I made up for via other veteran and religious related scholarships.

At 35, I had a nice nest egg built up, two prestigious degrees paid for via my early military career choice, and a very nice job lined up after graduation with significant upside. My wife and I have no debt (aside from our current house), some cash flowing investment properties, and positive career prospects going forward. I also have the option of continuing with (minimal impact) reserve service to get a small, but meaningful monthly pension at the age of 60.

The decisions (unanticipated in many instances) early on have enabled an empowering financial future. We're not uber-wealthy…yet. But we are secure - all without family contributions.

Some caveats: Most of my military career I lived in low cost of living areas (think rural Mississippi, Texas, and California). I was unmarried with no kids. I had a propensity to save (similar military peers with a similar trajectory had a lot less cash when they got out…and some have a lot more).

I write this only to present an alternative, showing the unanticipated rewards from making a particular career choice. The key thing here is the immense value of getting education paid for and being able to invest the money that would've gone to loan payments over a decade or more.

For many the military may not be the right move (and there are downsides)…but in my case, it had immense financial upside (and I got 1800 free flight hours out of the deal!), especially for a public school kid coming from a modest family. To you 17 year olds without money looking for options, taking advantage of government funded education in return for military service can be a lucrative path if tied to other cost-minimization strategies.

<comment><USER79> Really informative and inspiring comment.

But I wanted to ask if you ever consider the counterfactual where instead of flying planes you're peeling potatoes for four years? Let's just say due to bad luck or a twist of fate - _I didn 't know he was Colonel's son!_

I mean nothing post discharge sounds like it was too associated with your role as pilot - the benefits are available to any veteran. But it does seem like you live life with a healthy amount of initiative and I wonder if you think about starting life with less role-responsibility or have ever compared peer outcomes in this way?

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> As a millennial born in the early 80s, I know a good number of people from my college years who, I have learned over time, live a similarly charmed life.

Looking back, there was always something a bit odd about these folks: namely, that they seemed to be far more concerned than I was about what to do with their time. They seemed to really be concerned about having the "right" kind of job, or the "right" kind of life. When I was working customer service or slinging cocktails at the gay bars to pay my rent and food costs, they were researching grad schools (only the best), or traveling to the third world on short-term humanitarian missions. One took several years off from work without much apparent anxiety. Another jumped from city to city, making large numbers of fair-weather friends and throwing himself into startup after startup, never settling down or really committing to anything or anyone. Another married a successful artist, and raises the kids in Santa Monica. I know a few living very bohemian lives, in high-minded intentional communities, writing books to teach their peers about some obscure facet of culture. Some went into the corporate world, where they adequately fill a suit and sometimes write about M&A on a blog.

I've worked with lots of these types as well of course, in the tech industry. They have no concern about being their own angel, and care a lot about diversity, but have no qualms about asking you to work late, or over the weekend to help "the business" meet its latest pivot. Needless to say, all of these people are white.

My husband's family is white too, although quite poor. His father used to break and shoe horses, and can track an animal through a desert. The sort of man who relies on Medicare to pay for his liver removal surgery, his lymph- node removal, his spinal growths removals, and any other places where the cancer metastasized, but is out fixing a truck engine soon after, with his oxygen tank dangerously close to the welding torch. This happens in the sort of countryside where your trailer gets broken into, and the thieves drag your refrigerator over to their trailer not far away up the dirt road, leaving a trail you can see from space, but the police can't do anything. In an earlier time, he would have solved that problem himself, but he doesn't hear so good, or see so good thanks to a couple of strokes and type-I diabetes. The wife has MS, so he spends most of his time taking care of her.

When the grandfather shot himself, the gun was one of the most valuable things he left behind. Despite losing her retirement to shady financial management, after 30 years as a charge nurse in the ED, the wife couldn't wait to blow what little they got in the will on a new hot tub. Better enjoy it now.

Of course they'll have to sell their sandy little plot in the next year or so anyway, before it becomes worthless due to the water table drying up. My husband does what he can to bail them out when unexpected bills arrive, and maybe he ought to spend more on their comfort. God knows his sister can't help from behind bars.

My family is different, my parents paid for my bachelor's, just not my master's, but we can tell some similar stories from a couple generations back. My grandfather had to cut off his own father during the depression, essentially dooming him, because the old man stupidly lost everything he owned, and his only hope was the wage my grandfather earned, after a career as a ship's engineer, shoveling coal into the furnaces of buildings in NYC. This is the ugly side of progress no one wants to talk about: how people get left behind. How the parents fight a losing battle, and the kid grows up knowing their only hope is to get the hell away from it all. These callous things long to be forgotten.

</comment><comment><USER81> Basically, you got:

\- overpriced health-care, because the government thinks everyone should be able to buy health-care no matter what state their health is, but also everybody should be able to _not_ buy healthcare when they feel like they don't need to

\- overpriced private primary education, because the government thinks tax money must be locked up in a garbage public education system

\- overpriced college, because the government thinks everyone should be able to go to college (and go broke for it)

\- overpriced housing, because the government thinks everyone should be able to buy a house (and go broke for it)

\- overpriced stock, because the government-created asset bubbles must be re- inflated with cheap money in order to save the retirement funds

\- high taxes and deductions to mitigate the enormous amount of government debt that this whole charade requires

As a bonus, trillions of unfunded liabilities going into the future, meaning more taxes and deductions and fewer benefits for those suckers that'll have to pay into it.

Mark my words, in the future we will need the border wall to keep people _in_. Also don't forget that, as a citizen, you will owe taxes to Uncle Sam wherever you go.

</comment><comment><USER33> I can't believe this would be a shock to anyone. How else does a first time home buyer come up with a 20% deposit on a $500,000 house? There are obviously exceptions, but generally speaking that's where the money comes from.

Money from inheritance and family grossly distorts the market. Anyone who takes money from family or inheritance should be ashamed of themselves unless that money is used for helping the less fortunate.

Edit: I should add that I had access to family assistance financially and chose to not take it. Which made my life significantly more difficult. So this is something I feel very passionately about. Those who take the money know it is wrong, because most of them will never admit publicly they took any money.

<comment><USER82> Children should be ashamed to use their family's money to better their life? That's a rather extreme statement.

<comment><USER33> Yes, absolutely. It is wildly unfair to those who do not have access in a market economy.

<comment><USER83> The compromise is to make sure this transfer of income is taxed like any other income.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> >New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco or Washington, D. C.

One of these things is not like the others.

<comment><USER85> out of curiosity...guessing Boston?

[edit] more likely referring to Chicago

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> Thirty years ago you could raise a family with just one parent working. Nowadays that's pretty much impossible. The cost of living has skyrocketed and this leads a lot of people to seek support from their families.

<comment><USER87> You can still do that if you don't mind living in a 1100 SQ foot, cheaply built house in the suburbs.

<comment><USER88> 1100 sq.ft is enough space for 3 bedrooms and one kitchen/living room, which is definitely sufficient for a couple with 2 children.

<comment><USER87> I never said it wasn't. But good luck finding houses being built like that today.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Preferred hosts? - <AUTHOR>

My old hosting died so I switched my blog to Squarespace. I'm very unhappy with their service. Among other things, they don't provide proper url remapping, so my old link structure was remapped to their own arbitrary setup and has completely killed my search traffic. The other things include inflexible site editing and inability to host non-blog sites. Though that last one isn't really a complaint as I knew that before I signed up.
After getting back a brief response to a support ticket about the url mapping not being supported, I am ready to switch back to hosting service that gives me the level of control I want.
I checked out Slicehost.com, and the price is right for what I want (basic 256 slice), but I wanted to get some other opinions before I hand over the cc number.
Do other HN readers use Slicehost? If not, why, and what similar services do you use? <comment><USER2> I use everything Rackspace Cloud offers:

1\. Cloud Sites - managed cloud hosting. Code it and load it and it scales automatically - storage, databases, the works. They have clusters for PHP, MySQL, .NET, MSSQL, SSL, and you can even run .NET and PHP in the same folder, and they can access the same databases (great for forum migrations!)

2\. Cloud Servers - it's run on the same platform as Slicehost, in the same datacenter. Can't beat the price at pennies per hour to start, and you can resize servers on the fly.

3 Cloud Files - similar to S3, with built in Limelight CDN capability. I use it for static hosting for all of my sites. For the same price as S3, you get Limelight's footprint of edge servers.

Plus, when you're ready to grow, with Rackspace you can tie your cloud setup in with their dedicated servers.

</comment><comment><USER3> slicehost. the only problems i've ever had with any slices are problems i've inflicted upon myself. it is exactly what is advertised.

</comment><comment><USER4> I chose Linode because they offer 32-bit kernels. This means that Rails processes use up less memory. Their documentation isn't as good as Slicehost's and they currently don't have a backup service.

<comment><USER5> Exactly. And they are cheaper per MB as well. Linode has been great for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My recommendations:

Unmanaged hosting = slicehost

Managed hosting = liquidweb</comment>


Ride Sharing Adds to the Crush of Traffic at Airports - <AUTHOR> https://www.africanslive.com/ride-sharing-adds-to-the-crush-of-traffic-at-airports/ <comment><USER2> I missed the part where they explained how people would leave the airport without cars</comment>


Show HN: enter URL, get screenshot and hosted link to image - <AUTHOR> http://site2pic.com/

<comment><USER2> Cool, works well. It looks like you have some default viewport size so if content scrolls beneath it, it gets cropped in the image:

Compare:

<http://site2pic.com/pics/littleheroes.com9474.png>

To:

<http://www.littleheroes.com>

Care to share how you're doing this? Instrumenting webkit server side?

Edit: Just discovered a ruby program that can be installed with homebrew on OSX (brew install webkit2png). It's a command line call that does the same as this web service:

webkit2png <http://www.google.com> webkit2png -W 1000 -H 1000 <http://www.google.com>

(Sorry OP, don't mean to take away your thunder, just thought others might want to try this too.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, all the magic is done with url2png.com, I'm just adding a front-face with Twitter Bootstrap and a Django backend.

(edit) The cropping is because I've started with a 600x600 image, so taller sites will be cropped. I may add different image sizes as options.

Also I'm thinking about adding an editor with Raphaël. Other ideas are welcome.

One of the use-cases (for me) is to be able to quickly send a link to a screenshot to someone (technically challenged) with a button or something circled in red to explain "this is where you need to click".

(edit)I'm aware this can be done with command line, it's just that most people don't know how.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Chinese/non-English not supported? <http://site2pic.com/pics/www.yahoo.com.hk9533.png>

2\. You use `mailhide` in the Contact Us, what is the point? (I think some people who wanted to give you feedback might be scared by the ReCaptcha)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback

1\. I'll look into the debug log for that page.

2\. The point of reCaptcha is to thwart automated email harvesters. In any case I'll setup a proper "contact me" web form.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Didn't work the first time for www.cricinfo.com

\-- <http://site2pic.com/pics/www.cricinfo.com4813.png>

Some bugs to be worked out, but cool nonetheless :)

PS: Worked on subsequent tries

</comment><comment><USER5> This rejects TLDs (e.g. <http://io/>) and IPv6 URLs.

<comment><AUTHOR> This tool is for websites (places you can browse to), not URIs in general, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> really cool</comment>


Bingrep: Like grep, but for binaries - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/m4b/bingrep <comment><USER2> >like grep, but for binaries

It doesn't really seem like grep to me. grep takes 2 inputs: a text and a search string. bingrep only takes one input, a binary. Without a search string it's hard to really say this is like grep.

It seems similar to objdump but with somewhat differing information and with coloring.

<comment><USER3> possibly more like "less" but for binaries?

<comment><USER4> The sample output on the github page looks a lot like the sort of information you get from "readelf -a ...", but colorized.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ok, grep is a misnomer, but can we assume it was named binless and talk about the merits of this tool? It looks super useful.

I can see how it fills a gap. I am not very often examining binaries, so I can be wrong about it but am i wrong in assuming that objdump will simply list the parts it manages to interpret from a file and silently ignores gibberish or unsupported sections?

I have alway wanted an ability to examine a binary files in a way a bit more interpreted than an hex editor, but without missing any "gibberish" part.

I can see that tool as a nice addition to a binary forensics toolbox

<comment><USER6> In the case that you are interested, I made a tool for editing ELF files by hand ([https://github.com/TheThirdOne/elf- edit](https://github.com/TheThirdOne/elf-edit)).

It is hardly complete, but it does highlight section headers (and decode them into human readable format). One of the next features I want to implement is to skip to the section body, but I haven't had much time to work on it recently so it got put on the backburner.

Also, I realized while writing this that the repo doesn't have a readme, so if you want to check it out you'll have to install it. If you are interested, I might be able to make a decent readme tomorrow.

<comment><USER7> Does it do .NOTEs?

<comment><USER6> .notes aren't standardized so I don't know of a good strategy to highlight and decode them.

IIRC .note.gnu.build-id is just ascii text so it should be pretty easy to understand anyway.

I would think many others are also just text, but I don't know much about .notes in general because I was focusing on standardized, general ELF stuff.

<comment><USER7> Well, .notes are standard ELF .. the reason I'm asking is because .notes are for vendors, and well .. this seems like a tool-of-interest to vendors, y'know ..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you're into stuff like this, you might like my project Bloaty McBloatface, which can dump size profiles of binaries:

[https://github.com/google/bloaty](https://github.com/google/bloaty)

<comment><USER9> Is this in /google/ because of copyright reasons?

<comment><USER8> More or less. It's copyright Google because I am a Google employee and it's related to my work. But it's fully open-source (Apache 2) and I'm the only one really developing it or deciding things about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I use [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strings_%28Unix%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strings_%28Unix%29)

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm confused, grep has bianary options.

grep -U

<comment><USER12> The only thing the -U does is to not strip carriage returns embedded in the file.

But if you do, for example, _grep NSA_KEY suspiciousfile.exe_ , you're either going to get:

(a) "Binary file suspiciousfile.exe matches" (which is what I get on the particular system I tried it on, and I'd call that semi-useful because I'd like to see some context around it)

or possibly,

(b) a 50,000-character gibberish output to your shell containing somewhere within it the string "NSA_KEY" if you can possibly scroll through it to see where it appeared.

I think strings, or this bingrep, or some other binary-aware strings-like tool is better.

<comment><USER13> Unless you use -o/\--only-matching, that works fine for binaries!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> this is just the front end to the (same author's) more interesting library: [https://github.com/m4b/goblin](https://github.com/m4b/goblin)

</comment><comment><USER15> For indexing and searching into binary files, see also: [https://github.com/ANSSI-FR/Binacle](https://github.com/ANSSI-FR/Binacle)

</comment><comment><USER16> I recommend:

\- EDB debugger (like OllyDbg, qt based) [https://github.com/eteran/edb- debugger](https://github.com/eteran/edb-debugger)

\- HT editor (opensource clone of Hiew, curses based) [http://hte.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html](http://hte.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html)

Both provide this functionality as well.

</comment><comment><USER17> While this does support multiple file formats, there already exists a far more robust utility for ELFs, "readelf" in the the GNU binutils: [https://sourceware.org/binutils/docs/binutils/readelf.html](https://sourceware.org/binutils/docs/binutils/readelf.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> See also: [https://diffoscope.org](https://diffoscope.org)

</comment><comment><USER19> bingrep | grep</comment>


Show HN: How much local? - <AUTHOR> https://howmuchlocal.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Anesthesiologists, surgeons and other doctors dose multiple local anesthetics each day. Different ones have different uses. For trainees, this information can be hard to find. Now it's a little easier.

Hosted on AWS. Built with React.

</comment><comment><USER2> Nice! I am sure this helpful without having to look at mole to kg ratios or ml/kg etc.

What are you doing to prevent hackers from altering your ratios which could cause harm?

<comment><AUTHOR> We dose almost every drug in terms of mass. Hosting is on S3 and completely static, which minimizes the attack surface. The site is HTTPS-only to prevent man-in-the-middle content-altering attacks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is cool. But if something like this didn't exist already, that's scary.

Nice work Dr.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting. Is it international or US only?

Would it be easier to have this as a chart on the wall?</comment>


The last Enigma Message Decyphered in WWII.  GCHQ marks 75th anniv. of VE day - <AUTHOR> https://www.gchq.gov.uk/information/the-brown-network <comment><AUTHOR> The final decoded Enigma message:

[https://www.gchq.gov.uk/static- assets/images/information/Fin...](https://www.gchq.gov.uk/static- assets/images/information/FinalBrownNote.jpg)</comment>


The new Google Hangouts will not support XMPP - <AUTHOR> Hello from Google!
You are the administrator for one or more Google App Engine applications that may be impacted by an upcoming new product release. Google will be releasing a new communications product called Hangouts which users may choose to use instead of Google Talk. The new service does not support XMPP.
As a result XMPP bots such as the App Engine XMPP service will not be able to communicate with users who adopt the new service. There are two ways to keep your App Engine XMPP service working for end users:
1) Your users may use any chat client that supports XMPP. XMPP clients will continue to work as usual with the App Engine XMPP service.
2) End users will be asked to opt-into the new service when it goes live. Note that the go-live date may vary for Google Apps domains. End users and google app domain administrators may choose not to opt into the new system. If they do not opt in they will remain on the current Talk client and there will be no change to their existing functionality, including being able to exchange messages with App Engine XMPP bots. Users who already opted in may toggle back to the old XMPP based chat clients in Gmail.
Note that the changes discussed above have no impact on non-Google XMPP clients, which will continue to work as usual with the App Engine XMPP service.
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please don't hesitate to email us at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Sincerely,
The Google App Engine Team
© 2013 Google Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043
You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to Google Cloud Platform or your account. <comment><USER2> Larry Page seemed very upset [1] that Microsoft is basically leeching off their Gtalk contacts into Outlook, without returning the favor (with Skype I assume), and he said he'd prefer if things weren't like this and everyone was more open.

He didn't continue that idea, but I think he would've continued it with "...but since nobody wants to do that, then we won't do it anymore either". So they are probably responding in the same way they responded to the leeching of Gmail contacts by Facebook a few years ago, by blocking that API, or in this case replacing the XMPP protocol with a proprietary one. It's too bad it had to come to this, though.

[1] - [http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4334242/larry-page-to- tech...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4334242/larry-page-to-tech-world- being-negative-is-not-how-we-make-progress)

<comment><USER3> Gtalk will still be available though.

"... which users _may_ choose to use instead of Google Talk."

<comment><USER4> I don't think it's reasonable to expect Google Talk to remain indefinitely though - if you need XMPP you at least want an exit strategy if Hangouts isn't suitable. It's quite telling that the Hangouts app on Android is called "Hangouts (replaces Talk)" and takes Talk's URL in the play store.

<comment><USER3> In GTalk's case any XMPP client will do so an official app is almost irrelevant in its case.

<comment><USER5> Right, but you still need Google's XMPP _server_ to support it.

<comment><USER3> It's still there.

<comment><USER6> For now.

<comment><USER7> Despite the clear warning signs, I am willing to put money on people whinging in a year or two when they shut down those servers, just like everyone got all upset about Reader.

<comment><USER8> And whining about shutting down Reader accomplished what, exactly?

<comment><USER7> Absolutely nothing of course. Didn't stop people from whining; people love to whine on the internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well done everyone.

Instant Messaging is now dead for me because all the people I used to chat with are now fragmented across 4 or 5 different services. Aside from those who gave up on IM for the same reason I now have to.

You've all literally killed IM. Well done.

<comment><USER10> XMPP/Jabber has the concept of Transports to address this very problem.

Sure, you usually get a common denominator of features between the various networks, but presence and chat usually is enough.

<comment><USER11> You mean the transports that spams my buddy list with tons of inactive contacts and duplicates?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I run two user accounts in Chrome during the day: One connected to my personal use the other to Google Apps for Business. I use Chat for Google for both (Adium sucks)

About an hour ago, the personal account had a changed icon, started looking nicer, and is now called Hangouts. The Apps for business one stayed the same.

I've never been closer to being a fanboi than I was with Google, but this seals it...I'm pissed. Closing off (yet another) service in favor of proprietary protocols is not something a "Don't Be Evil" company does...in fact it's why you have the motto in the first fucking place.

You could have made the change without breaking XMPP. This is just shitty all the way around.

<comment><USER13> You're wrong on almost every point. "Don't Be Evil" is not Google's motto, XMPP chat still works fine for my hangouts account and no, they couldn't do it without breaking the XMPP.

I just hope they'll keep XMPP running for the chat. I'll stop using it the second it'll stop working in bitlbee.

<comment><USER14> > "Don't Be Evil" is not Google's motto

Ahem. This[1] is close enough to a motto to make this part of your comment irrelevant.

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is incredibly confusing. The sentences seem to alternate, between "Your end users will be affected, you must do something" and "Your end users will not be affected". Some of the sentences seem to imply this is isolated to AppEngine ("Your users may use any chat client that supports XMPP","the changes discussed above have no impact on non-Google XMPP clients") and others seem to imply that Hangouts is going to completely stop working with XMPP, if not now, very soon.

Can anyone clarify if this actually impacts your average standalone XMPP client, not connected with AppEngine, sending and receiving messages to Google Talk users?

<comment><USER16> Standard XMPP clients still work. If you use Pidgin or Adium or other similar clients, you can still send and receive messages to Google users regardless of whether they're using Hangouts.

If you have an App Engine instance, and it uses the App Engine XMPP Service[1] to send messages to people, then that will stop working for users who switch to Hangouts.

[1] <https://developers.google.com/appengine/articles/using_xmpp>

<comment><USER15> Thanks - that would seem to make the title of this submission to HN quite misleading (even if it is extracted directly from text of the source).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Something interesting is going on here. If you log in to Plus, you can use New Hangouts _right now_. And they _do_ interoperate with XMPP users _right now_ -- I just tried it.

So does this mean the rollout is not complete, and what they rolled out as Hangouts today is not what they'll ultimately roll out? Or does it mean -- as I suspect -- that New Hangouts is XMPP under the hood, but they plan to flip the 'interoperate' switch to 'off' once they think nobody will notice?

<comment><USER18> No, what it means is that 3rd party clients can still interoperate with Hangouts. What does not work is XMPP the way app engine uses it.

<comment><USER19> Are you sure? From my reading, it's saying the exact opposite - XMPP clients still connect to a seperate XMPP chat service that's compatible with the App Engine XMPP support and completely seperate from Hangouts. The Verge also had a chat with the head of that department and he said that Hangouts drops XMPP support, apparently with no caveats about it still partially supporting XMPP: [http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4318830/inside-hangouts- go...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4318830/inside-hangouts-googles-big- fix-for-its-messaging-mess)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Yay, the balkanization of chat. So much for babel/babble. Now you have iMessage, WhatsApp, Viber, Skype, Hangouts, etc. etc.

The biggies will be the ones supported by large companies (ie, Skype, iMessage, Hangouts).

So when will Amazon buy Viber or another smaller chat community?.

<comment><USER21> So... we're back to the 90s? AIM and ICQ and YIM and MSN? I CAN'T WAIT.

<comment><USER22> Sadly, it means the same tech as in the 90s will win out, because it is TRULY platform independent.

SMS. And as much as I hate to say it, iMessage has the best support/transparency for it so far

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> _"Google Talk [..] was based on an old standard that predated the advent of cloud computing"_ \- what an extremely poor justification... He is not even trying to sound credible !

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm amazed at people complaining about the fragmentation of IM clients and how it's going to kill instant messaging.

IM has never been unified. In the mid-90s you had the war between AIM and ICQ, then came along the IM clients from MSN, Yahoo and Excite. That's what led to the rise of multi-protocol IM clients like Gaim, Jabber and IMVU and out of that rose XMPP (one of 5 major "cross-compatibilty" IM standards).

Then you had a new generation of IM wars as desktop clients died out and were replaced by browser chat like GTalk and Facebook Messenger. As the desktop IM clients died, Skype pretty much absorbed their desktop users into their voice chat platform.

But now web IM clients are being wiped out by a new generation of mobile IM apps like WhatsApp, Vibber, etc.

IM has never been unified, and given it's track record, I doubt that's going to change anytime soon.

<comment> X-Istence Gtalk and Facebook messenger both used XMPP. XMPP is federated so it allowed many people to easily communicate. Even MSN messenger got on board:

<http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/live/hh826554.aspx>

AIM also has limited XMPP support (although that is just from a quick Google search, can't figure out if that is still the case).

Either way more and more clients and chat protocols were beginning to converge onto a single standard, that allowed people to easily communicate across different "domains". That is now going away.

<comment><USER25> Microsoft Lync has an XMPP gateway role as well. Unfortunately, Lync Online (Office 365) lacks this ability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think that, at this point, the only Google service that still supports standard, interoperable APIs anymore is Gmail. All the other ones have been discontinued or are in the process of being discontinued. I wonder how long it'll be before Gmail gets closed off.

</comment><comment><USER26> Considering that XMPP federation has been turned off for some time now, this really only hurts users using XMPP clients.

I was wondering why my friends with non-Google Jabber IDs were never showing up as online, and one day figured out federation was turned off.

This is as if a few months ago your email provider silently discarded emails to and from other domains, and just today abandoned SMTP and IMAP.

The true failure happened way back when federation was abandoned, not today.

<comment><USER27> Federation was turned off temporarily to fix an exploit then turned back on. I guess it's moot now.

<comment><USER28> Right - there was a lot of noise about federation being turned off, although it never was.

1) Subscription requests to/from other domains were blocked.

2) Only for a short period (about a month, tops).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Ugh, and to think that the only thing needed to prevent this was one other "big" IM provider using XMPP. If we didn't have to rely on a single point for everything, and were, instead, more distributed, like email, then Google would have found it much harder to cut federation off.

</comment><comment><USER30> So,

1) Competitors use Google's APIs based on open standards for their own advantage.

2) Google gets annoyed.

3) Google stops supporting open standards.

Well, that's my honeymoon with Google over.

It seems a naive mistake to have assume an enlarging Google would stay true to their roots.

It's time for those roots to move. Onwards and upwards.

<comment><USER30> I'm reminded of the story about an angry RMS accosting some devs saying they should be creating their own open APIs rather than using X company's closed API.

It turns out Open Source's weird uncle was right again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I need a client for Ubuntu then :(

<comment><USER32> Just to clarify: If you think you need a client because you are currently using an XMPP client with your gmail account, then you do NOT need to switch. See bullet point 1 — XMPP _clients_ are still supported.

XMPP _federation_ is going away :(.

<comment><USER33> Google enthusiastically kills legacy and niche products. I'm making wild guesses, but I don't think we'll have support for XMPP clients in the long run.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Oh, how I wish I was a Facebook employee today. Nothing like a good fight when you have the upper hand and the other party is being a jerk.

</comment><comment><USER35> They're still supporting client-to-server XMPP, so third party apps can always just connect as a client rather than doing federation.

</comment><comment><USER36> I wonder how long google talk will last in Outlook.com

</comment><comment><USER37> woah :(

</comment><comment><USER38> Yep, I already warned about this a few days ago. I would like to encourage everyone to avoid using this walled garden service and make sure you tell both your friends and Google why. Say NO to proprietary network protocols!

<comment><USER39> So, what do you propose as a realistic alternative?

<comment><USER40> <http://www.jabber.org/> maybe?

Or run your own xmpp service, if you are a business/company. I personally use prosody. Works great.

<comment><USER41> I think that's the entire issue. Those of us with our own xmpp servers can no longer talk to hangouts because we have to have an account with google. s2s is going away, and I really am not interested in creating yet another account on some external system so I can chat with everyone on the non-federated system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This seemed inevitable. This interface and backend is so inextricably tied to Google+ and Google's new infrastructure. I'm very disappointed. Google's services work well for me, they're well integrated, I love Android, but Android is no longer the bastion of freedom and openness I'd hoped for.

I'll be very happy with Google Hangouts but I'm still waiting for the properly federated chat that appeals to the masses.

<comment><USER42> Well, the XMPP still works and is decentralized. Is also the biggest network. If that is not enough for you then I'm afraid you won't find any other alternative.

You can set up your own XMPP server or use one of tons of the public ones: <http://xmpp.net/>

Edit: There's also jabber.org <http://www.jabber.org/> which probably will operate as long as XMPP is still relevant.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, I (and tons of people, apparently) misunderstood the changes to XMPP. They _are_ removing the federation however and that does affect interop with their network.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Serious question: how practical is it to build something like Hangouts that is meant to compete with iMessage, WhatsApp, Viber etc on top of XMPP? is it even possible?

<comment><USER28> Sure. Much of the Google Talk video stuff was all designed for XMPP; they actively took part in the standardization at times.

WhatsApp _is_ XMPP, fundamentally, in any case.

<comment><USER3> Why is it not utilized more widely then? foregoing for a minute that everyone is cultivating their own gardens - what are the weaknesses of XMPP that would make it so easily avoidable for most of these apps?

<comment><USER43> It's definitely not the lack of features, since XMPP is extendable. I've heard that the protocol is quite chatty and would cause power drain on phones. That could probably be solved with a binary serialization alternative to XML, though.

<comment><USER44> While the use of XML in the protocol might be considered verbose, stream-level compression from TLS quite makes up for that. With many contacts, the number of presence stanzas might indeed drain the battery because the antenna will be 'up' quite a bit.

However, the XMPP community has been active in quantifying such issues and providing solutions. The beginning of a document with background information is available as <http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0286.html>. There are also various opinions on the topic to be found online, like <http://www.deepdarc.com/2008/02/14/mobile-xmpp/>, that, as you can see, dates back half a decade already.

<comment><USER28> The only thing Google actually did fro mobile XMPP was google:queue, which bunches together presence updates such that the antenna efficiency is improved dramatically.

Facebook also have a private extension, as I understand things.

I should actually submit that extension - I wrote it up as a XEP ages back, but various things have held it up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> With Google focussing on G+ like crazies(even though I don't know many people who use this service) and seeing Hangout is almost fused in G+, this very much looks like a _Google Reader_ waiting to happen for Google Talk.

</comment><comment><USER46> Am I the only one that's thinking that "backend" for this is actually whats left of google wave?</comment>


Any hackers from Milwaukee? - <AUTHOR>

I am moving back to Milwaukee in the next few weeks and I don't know any hacker types in the area.  I grew up in Milwaukee and I never sensed that there was much of a hacker community there compared to Madison.<p>Am I wrong?  Are there Milwaukee hackers out there? <comment><AUTHOR> I guess not! :)</comment>