Ask HN: Do you know any amazing space epics? - <AUTHOR>

I am looking for a great series of space age fiction to read in my spare time and expand my imagination. I was thinking Lord of the Rings but set in interstellar space. I prefer books with thoughtful characters, accurate science, and spiritual themes.<p>Please and thanks. <comment> benji-york This isn't a series, but a set of fiction that I think fits the bill. Conveniently all of these works are available free online:

After Life: <http://sifter.org/~simon/AfterLife> Blindsight: <http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm> Passages in the Void: <http://localroger.com/>

The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect (from localroger.com) is also pretty good in the imagination expanding department but be forewarned: parts of it are very hard to read (quite gruesome).

</comment><comment><USER8> Future History series - <USER2>

Known Space series - <USER3>

Uplift series - <USER4>

Dune series - <USER5>

Mars trilogy - <USER6>

</comment><comment><USER9> Ian M. Banks "Culture" series.

"Matter" might be a good one to start with if you're looking for something similar to LotR.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. This is the series I have been looking for. I almost feel bad for not knowing this book existed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm a fan of Charles Stross's Accelerando. It's epic to the point where it takes place across generations. It also has the nice benefits of being free online, and you'll occasionally see cstross post here.

</comment><comment><USER11> Neil Stephenson's Anathem. Maybe not tons of actual _space_ bits, but most of the rest of it matches what you want.

<comment><AUTHOR> this is exactly what I want. thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The Foundation series.

<comment><USER13> Just got "Foundation" from the library today (because someone stole my Red Mars book :( )

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> William Gibson: Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive Orson Scott Card: Enders Game Neil Stephenson: Snowcrash Isaac Asimov: The Foundation (series)

I am not sure these qualify as space epics, but they are all good reads.

</comment><comment><USER15> Ahhh, I've only ever read one SF series that left me with the same sense of wonder as the Lord of the Rings. You just have to try Hyperion/Fall of Hyperion, by Dan Simmons. At first I thought it was ridiculous space opera, with loads of jargon and technical impossibilities that just made it read like 3rd-rate SF. That is right up until the point where Simmons blindsighted me by making all of that stuff an absolutely necessary part of the story. I can be more explicit without giving out a few spoilers, but I've read _a lot_ of SF, and this is really a cut above the rest.

<comment><USER16> I've read the first two (I thought the 1st book was better actually) - <USER7> I've heard the rest of the series is not so good.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, I wasn't as big a fan of Endymion - it was much more touchy-feely in its justifications than was the first series. Still enjoyable, but not in the same league as Hyperion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Alastair Reynolds "Revelation Space" series is fantastic. He also writes some great stand alone pieces (House of Suns for example). He is also quite strict about being hard sci-fi (no faster than light travel for example).

Also The Culture series by Iain M. Banks is pretty amazing but tends to be multiple independent stories within the same universe. He is also much softer on the science (quite a lot How does it work? Quite well thank you descriptions).

<comment><USER18> "He is also quite strict about being hard sci-fi (no faster than light travel for example)."

Or rather, it was tried (in the Revelation Space series) but did not work out well...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The Night's Dawn trilogy by Peter F Hamilton will absolutely rock your world, going by what you are asking for. After this, go for The Commonwealth Saga by the same author. You really, really are missing out on a treat, but the best thing is that you have around 6,000 pages worth of epic space opera waiting for you in those books, and I envy the fact that you have all of them still to read - as quickly as you want!

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd recommend the Great Three : Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein

</comment><comment><USER21> Read Emphyrio by Jack Vance. It's just one book, but it's a fantasy book set in space. The main character is a woodcarver, but there are spaceships that travel to many inhabited worlds. Vance is one of the best authors I know to make a world feel worn, unlike the sci-fi of many other authors.

</comment><comment><USER22> "A Fire Upon The Deep" by Vernor Vinge.

<comment><USER23> A Deepness in the Sky, which is loosely related to A Fire Upon the Deep, is also great and also won a Hugo award.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> For epic science fiction with huge space battles, depth of story and interesting characters you cannot miss books by David Weber, especially the Honor Harrington series

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> thanks everyone. I have a few year's worth of great books to read. Thank God for HN.

</comment><comment><USER25> thoughtful, accurate and spiritual? Sounds like battlefield earth to me.</comment>


Startup founders need someone to talk to who isn't board, team, or spouse - <AUTHOR> http://www.fernandopizarro.com/startupceoadvisor <comment><AUTHOR> Hello all. After going through several of my own startups and writing several startup books I have a (small) amount of wisdom to share and the belief that founders often need an unbiased listener. So that is the service I'm offering. Simple pricing and nowhere near what an corporate executive coach costs.</comment>


Braille Neue Combines Touchable Braille with Visible Letters - <AUTHOR> https://mymodernmet.com/braille-neue-typeface-kosuke-takahashi/ <comment><USER3> I don't quite understand the problem it solves. It has disadvantages over dedicated type for both sighted and blind people. For the sighted, it's harder to read than fonts typically used for signage, and the blind get a cumbersome letter-by-letter string rather than grade 2 braille.

What advantages does it have versus just overlaying regular braille with an easy-to-read font? Yes, the dots don't match up with the letters, but that is not really a problem, is it?

<comment><USER4> I like the spirit of it but the readability for sighted, and especially barely sighted people is problematic. If it works for blind people but not for almost blind people, it's a bad solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's a neat idea, but for public signage, I'm not sure there's much value in aligning the braille dots with the visible characters. Tactile letters and visual type can coexist quite easily on the same area without interfering much with each other, so what's the problem?

I could definitely see this as an aid to learning braille, I just don't see it causing a big change in accessible signage.

</comment><comment><USER6> Except that most people don't use Braille letter by letter - they use grade 2 Braille which combines multiple letters into a single character - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Braille](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Braille)

<comment><USER7> Could be done in a font with ligatures.

Turns out that ligatures in common font formats are quite powerful! See e.g. [http://www.sansbullshitsans.com/](http://www.sansbullshitsans.com/) or [https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode](https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode)

<comment><USER8> For a correct Braille 2 translation one needs to understand the context of a word. Your first link actually is a good example for this problem. Enter "agile" and "fragile".

<comment><USER9> To second this, Braille "folding" is also sensible to pronunciation..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One thing to keep in mind is that not-all people who are blind are completely without vision. There's a lot of variations of blindness, and the need for accessibility. There's a good chance that some people needing to read braille can see that there's a sign there, but just can't read the letters with their eyes, especially in certain lighting conditions.

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting. My mother has worked on a similar system for awhile, embracing some of the more technical nuance of braille (like contractions and math and such) [http://dotlessbraille.org/](http://dotlessbraille.org/) which was inspired by her father's work (my grandfather) on a what he called "Braille for the sighted" or "kobographs" (his initials are KOB) [http://www.dotlessbraille.org/kobographs.htm](http://www.dotlessbraille.org/kobographs.htm)

<comment><USER12> I made a font based off Kobigraphs with font struct a few years ago [1] - <USER2> it's not really a perfect mapping. I found the dotlessbraille.org site quite interesting.

[1] [https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/365490/braille_ko...](https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/365490/braille_kobigraphs_standard)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Something I've always wondered is how blind people discover braille on placards in public spaces, given the seeming random placement of signage and the unreliability of signage to include braille.

<comment><USER14> Life as a blind person is littered with questions like this. Quite often, braille signage is one of those things a sighted companion points out, usually just because of the "hey, look at this!" factor. I go through life expecting that places won't have braille signs, or if they do, I'll look like an idiot trying to find them anyway so I expect not to use them. There are some places that often have similar layouts (e.g. hotels) where this situation could be taken advantage of - if hotels had braille signs for room numbers it would make it easier to navigate. But I've never stayed in a hotel that did.

There are other issues, for example an airport might have a special assistance desk for disabled travellers but you need assistance to find or reach it.

<comment><USER13> Thank you for the response. How helpful would it be to have some kind of standard that indicates a building has braille signage? I'm thinking it could be somewhere you would always know where to inspect first, so you dont waste time checking around. I think a good place would be a door handle into the building that simply idicates right or left. Then just inside the door to the right or left there would be braille instructions like - "all rooms have braille signs 5 feet from ground. The floorplan is such. Here is where you can find room x y z."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm not blind, but I've always wanted to learn braille so I could read in the dark while getting ready for bed. However, I've also been lazy and haven't devoted the time to learning. I think this might be the perfect thing to let me passively learn while I do my normal reading. Kudos to the creator!

<comment><USER14> If you want to learn to read braille by touch rather than by sight, you may have a hard time trying to do so passively. Paying attention to what your sense of touch is telling you and then translating it into letters, words, sentences and then eventual meaning is not the same as using your eyes to achieve the same thing. It's also a fair bit slower unless you practice a lot. Best of luck with it though, more people should learn things like braille as a life hack!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry for the clickbait-y title... it's the one on the page itself.

I did think that this was an interesting design, and might be of interest to people here.

I also found a website for the font itself: [http://brailleneue.com/](http://brailleneue.com/)

<comment><USER16> It's great Takahashi lists prior art under "Reference of Past Works", explaining Braille Neue differs from previous attempts by

>design[ing] a typeset that correspond[s] not only to latin alphabets but also to Japanese fonts.

I wonder why those other efforts (or any effort) were not used for the braille signage one often sees at bank ATMs and in building interiors.

The idea is really cool and I like the aesthetic of Braille Neue, which looks monospace in its capital letters version. (Presumably a lowercase, if there were lowercase versions, would not map so cleanly.) Also, there is the issue of punctuation which would in some cases would defy visual/tactile mapping. [0]

In any case, what Takahashi presents so far is very very cool.

[0] [http://www.brl.org/codes/session01/punc.html](http://www.brl.org/codes/session01/punc.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Cool idea, but who benefits from the alignment? Why not just place to dots as usual and then paint the text over everything in whatever font you want? Seems like it would be less distracting to the sighted with no downside at all to the blind.

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure what it was created for, but it seems like a neat way to learn Braille for people with sight. Close your eyes, feel the dots, and look to see if you got it right.

<comment><USER19> Acutally it's not. The braille dots just happen to randomly lie somewhere on the lines of the letters.

It's silimar to this thing that is supposed to teach the numbers: [https://imgur.com/m6HOhfJ](https://imgur.com/m6HOhfJ) It's so constructed (useless lines and serifs where more corners where needed) that you can't really learn anything from it.

<comment><USER20> I'm a very visual learner; if I spent enough time looking at these letters I'd probably start to remember where the dots are on each letter. Not sure how well that'd translate to recall when touching the letters with my eyes closed though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Derived from the popular Helvetica Neue font

I'm not really seeing the resemblance. Could someone enlighten me? Also, would this lead to licensing restrictions?

<comment><USER22> Either the article is incorrect, or there is a different style not shown that is actually based on Helvetica. You're not missing anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Though I don't imagine this particular typeface will suddenly be popping up everywhere, I think there's a lot of value here to introduce accessibility to more spaces and encourage similar projects to come about.

</comment><comment><USER24> I have an old friend from college who, at that time, was already blind. Since then, illness has robbed her of her hearing.

Having something like this where she can read, and her husband can see the same written content would be invaluable to their relationship.

Forwarding this article to the couple.

</comment><comment><USER25> Why don't they overlay transparent Braille lettering onto existing signs?

</comment><comment><USER26> Isn't Braille always the same size so I can touch it? Isn't print in public spaces often large so I can see it from far away?</comment>


Database and AI software developer Co-founder - <AUTHOR> https://www.listee.net/ <comment><AUTHOR> Listee was founded by myself, Jacob Engel, as well as my two additional founders at the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University. Listee is a professional matching service that matches people with opportunities based on desired skills, interests and goals. Listee serves as a way to find opportunities and people that are of resource to your career and personal goals.

<comment><USER2> What does this have to do with post title: "Database and AI software developer Co-founder"?

Why do you not have current opportunities listed? How much does this cost? Where is your social proof?

By the way, the page does not look like it is designed for desktop.

Good luck!</comment></comment>


Ansible is coming to Windows - <AUTHOR> http://www.ansible.com/blog/windows-is-coming

<comment><AUTHOR> Documentation: [http://docs.ansible.com/intro_windows.html](http://docs.ansible.com/intro_windows.html)</comment>


The Mathematical Surprises of Triangles, Squares and Pentagons - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/martin-gardner-at-101-it-s-as-not-so-easy-as-3-4-5/ <comment><USER2> "Given a triangle with one obtuse angle, is it possible to cut the triangle into smaller triangles, all of them acute?"

Isn't the answer obviously 'yes'? Am I missing something?

<comment><USER3> It is possible, but I wouldn't consider it trivial. Given an obtuse triangle with vertices A, B, and C, where vertex C is the obtuse angle, one of the dissection lines _must_ split vertex C in order to make two acute angles.

Now, you have some choices as to where this line goes. If it is simply dissected straight across to the line segment AB, then you can either form two right triangles, or one acute and one obtuse. Either way, you're right back where you started, needing to segment a non-acute triangle into acutes. So that can't be the solution.

This means that the new segment starting from C must terminate at a new point D in the interior of the triangle...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > In another devious brainteaser, Martin displayed the following dissection of > a triamond into four congruent convex pieces and asked for a dissection of a > square using five congruent convex pieces.

> The answer, in hindsight, is blindingly obvious—did we mention that Martin > was also an ace magician, and hence a master of misdirection?

I really want to know the answer, but Google isn't being helpful.

<comment><USER5> Five stacked rectangles (height 1/5 of squares, width same as square).

<comment><USER4> Damn. That _is_ blindingly obvious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> What really caught my eye in the article was the end: Martin Gardner's "The Annotated Alice" has been updated yet again, this time for the 150th anniversary of the story.

I have the previous two editions of the book and I'm seriously thinking of getting this one too.

</comment><comment><USER6> In the article there's a statement that looks terribly 'wrong' for me:

> Jennifer McLoud, a Native American and the first in her family to earn even > a bachelor's degree […]

Wait, was that somehow important? It feels so damn racist to me.

Small note, I'm italian and I'm honestly interested on how others see this.

<comment><USER7> I'll preface by saying that it certainly isn't relevant to the article, and I do find the phrasing to be a bit demeaning to bachelor's degrees.

On the other hand, even going for a bachelor's degree can be met with a lot of resistance in some family cultures. I've known families that ostracized a member for being the first to go to college instead of pursuing the union or the force. I can't speak to how widespread this is, but being the first to make it to college is in itself sometimes a real achievement. It might be a wild thought for those of us who were raised thinking a Bachelor's is just part of the natural progression.

<comment><USER8> Conversely, in some minority groups it can be a great source of pride to be the first one in the family to go to college and get a bachelor's degree.

I don't think it's likely for the writer of the article to know that Jennifer McLoud was the first in her family to graduate college without McLoud revealing it herself. Automatically assuming it's racist seems like a stretch and unnecessary.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. Most of the time, perhaps all, I've heard this phrase, it's a source of pride.

We have to remember, the US was vastly and primarily agricultural and largely didn't attend secondary education in numbers till after WWII with the gi bill and subsequent popularization of secondary education.

The phrase is typically a way to show achievement in the face of slim odds, like from broken home, no tradition of emphasis on education, etc.

The only "racist" element, if it can be called that is the presumption the secondary education is seen as modern sophisticated and good, which I think it is, to practical extents, but can see where some may disagree.

<comment><USER10> One nit for your comment: In the US, "primary education" means grade school. "Secondary" means high school. "Post-secondary" is college. Through WWII, the majority of US children attended secondary education (high school) but not college.

<comment><USER9> True, it gets confusing, but tertiary to my mind means postgrad. But yeah, I meant college/university was rare before the post war period. And people thought and still consider it an achievement meriting praise.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


We don't trust drinking fountains anymore, and that's bad for our health - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-dont-trust-drinking-fountains-anymore-and-thats-bad-for-our-health/2015/07/02/24eca9bc-15f0-11e5-9ddc-e3353542100c_story.html <comment><USER2> I grew up in LA, where water is scarce, and valued. Water fountains are around, but they have valves, which break, stick, or otherwise cause problems. When I lived in Chicago, I was shocked to see that their water fountains have no valves: They run full flow 24x7. Given the weather (frozen pipes) and the water resources available to Chicago (Lake Michigan), it makes sense for them to do it this way, but I had a lot of dissonance when I first saw it.

<comment><USER3> Ditto rome. It just comes out of the wall in places.

<comment><USER4> And (last time I've been) it was excellent water. Strange seeing other tourists paying for the expensive mineral water next to a running tap. (they probably didn't know that the water is fine or didn't care).

<comment><USER5> When I was a tourist in Rome I didn't know what they were for at first. After some research I became an enthusiastic Nasoni user. I really like the trick where you plug the end and the water comes out of a hole on top of the spout like a drinking fountain.

<comment><USER4> had a good guidebook with me when I was in Rome. It said that the water is excellent and showed the trick with the hole - so I knew it and used it.

Mostly I filled a pretty small bottle with water and carried that around. Didn't had to carry much, because I could refill it on nearly every corner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've always found it kind of funny that in "capitalist" US, there is free water all over the place. It's one of my favorite things to drink good, clean water for free in Portland after getting off a long flight from Europe. In "socialist" Europe, you're pretty much stuck with expensive bottled water in places like airports, unless you have a cup or something and don't mind drinking from the bathroom faucets.

OTOH, one of the great things about cycling in Italy is that every little teeny tiny town has a water fountain, usually near the church or town square. Even on the hottest days of summer, you could probably get by with one small water bottle if you're willing to stop regularly.

<comment><USER7> There are water fountains in every airport in Europe (and pretty much the world, it's regulatory) they are usually located in or near the restrooms.

Not to mention that pretty much every restaurant will give you tap water for free.

<comment><USER8> I was flatly told "no" when I asked for tap water at a restaurant in Italy. The waitress seemed a little disgusted I would ask, too. I've heard some peoples have an aversion to tap water even if it's become safe these days, so I guess it was that, or maybe some kind of miscommunication.

Maybe she just thought it has a bad taste, but it can't have been bad enough that I'd prefer paying 2-3 euros for bottled water.

<comment><USER9> _> I was flatly told "no" when I asked for tap water at a restaurant in Italy._

Modern consumerism at work!

In most of Italy, 30 years ago, asking for a jug of water at a restaurant was absolutely normal; you would order bottles only if you preferred sparkling, or if you were acting stupendous.

By the mid-90s, drinking bottled water at home had become normal even in cities with perfectly working water systems. People worried about hygiene started requiring bottled water in all circumstances, to be opened in their presence (god forbid you would actively recycle glass bottles in your establishment! -- to be fair though, in a country where screwing your fellow man is considered the smart thing to do, charging bottled-water prices for tap water was far from uncommon).

Nowadays, it's expected that water should be served in bottles; it's supposedly more hygienic and it's certainly more profitable for restaurants.

Somebody joked that in Sicily people drink water bottled in the Alps, and in the Alps they drink water bottled in Sicily. It's all great for the economy, of course, and terrible for the environment, but hey, _così è la vita_.

<comment><USER10> I had to laugh when a bottle of water here in Australia became more expensive than the same-sized bottle of carbonated syrup drink.

A barman friend charged a client $X for a round, including a bottle of water. One of his regulars scrunched up his face in thought, did the calculations, and said "Did you just charge $6 for a bottle of water?". The reply: "Did you see her blink?". It's been ridiculously normalised. For the record, my hometown is supposedly famous for excellent tapwater for drinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> European capitalism destroying old American traditions and cultures just sounds wrong to your ears when you are so used to the narrative of McDonald's and Hollywood taking over the world.

In Germany I think I saw a dedicated drinking fountain only once. There are of course fountains, but most of the time there is a sign on them saying "Kein Trinkwasser" ("no drinking water"). We have exceptionally good tap water and I think only very few Germans fear to drink it. I notice it every time I brush my teeth in another country, it just tastes bad. So they got us with another trick: Germans are just used to sparkling water.

That is a valuable lock-in lesson: Add an unimportant but prominent usage- detail to your product as long as your customers _need_ it so when an alternative comes along they are just used to it and too lazy to switch. Works best when your customers are children.

<comment><USER12> The "no drinking water" signs have to do with health requirements for drinking water.

Water for firefighting, for example, has to be isolated from drinking water to prevent any risk of contamination. Due to how it is used, this water may have to be stored for very long periods of time and provides a breeding ground for all kinds of things you wouldn't want in your drinking water (e.g. legionella).

I'm fairly certain most (non-drinking) fountains use something like a semi- closed loop system where the same water just circulates through the fountain and fresh water is only used to replace any water lost to evaporation or spilling. This means the water is easily contaminated and therefore not suitable for drinking.

In some public restrooms (though this seems very rare), even the tap water is labelled as not safe for drinking. In these cases the tap water is likely not sufficiently isolated from the water tank for firefighting and therefore not safe despite coming from drinking water.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The primary reasons I don't drink from water fountains often are there isn't enough water pressure and it feels like you have to kiss the fountain to get water or someone spit in the fountain.

Solve those two problems and people will use them like crazy. At U of M the fountains are everywhere. They even have little Counters saying how many bottles of water they have saved.

<comment><USER14> This. Most fountains I find are broken or way underpowered.

<comment><USER15> Mounting them upside-down might help with the power problem.

Another issue is the run-off, often the base of them is surrounded by muddy mess, bowls for dogs to drink out of, whatever. Proper drainage and some awareness of less common use cases would also be important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Been seeing these water bottle refill stations pop up around:

[http://blog.hughessupply.com/files/2011/11/EZH2O_Single_L_Fi...](http://blog.hughessupply.com/files/2011/11/EZH2O_Single_L_Filterless.jpg)

<comment><USER17> I've seen those too. I don't care whether or not they have a filter (my water bottle does), but I do like that it just makes it way more convenient to top off the water bottle. Before, I had to tilt the bottle and that would mean I couldn't fill it all the way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I always drink tap water here in the Netherlands, in the US where I have been (Houston, New Orleans, Boston, Long Beach) the water just tastes like it came from a swimming pool. So much chlorine, I couldn't drink it. In San Fransisco it was relatively ok though, still a faint chlorine taste but drinkable. I understand the difficulty of maintaining such a large water distribution net but I certainly switch to bottled water when I'm in the US.

I do like the fact that you can get free water almost everywhere, there was often a large can and cups on the bar, free to take. Here a tap water is sometimes as expensive as a beer (in a bar obviously).

<comment><USER19> > I do like the fact that you can get free water almost everywhere, there was > often a large can and cups on the bar, free to take. Here a tap water is > sometimes as expensive as a beer (in a bar obviously).

Wow in most of Europe this would not be legal. Are you sure your local laws allow this?

<comment><USER20> How can selling water at a commercial establishment be illegal? Bottled water industry would be out of business, as some of them are known to resell tap water too. I'm from Europe too, by the way, and don't see the big deal. I'd say around here it's pretty split - around a half of places will offer free water, and a half will offer it for money (not for beer prices though).

<comment><USER21> Not sure if it's illegal here, but in South Africa restaurants are expected to serve you tap water if you ask for it. Doing otherwise would be rude, and most waiters (even at pubs) will clarify if you want 'bottled or tap' and 'with ice and lemon.'

I have noticed a strange phenomenon in Europe too, please forgive me if I'm generalising as I'm aware it's a big place, but people there seem like they won't do something without getting paid.

Example: delivery personnel who would deliver a refrigerator up to your door (but not further, into the kitchen) and a plumber who refused to even discuss what the options were for a problem we were having that was not what he had been called in for.

That doesn't happen here. Instead, the delivery guy usually helps you unpack the item of delivery, and the plumber will offer his opinion on a job he was not necessarily called in to fix.

Once again, standard disclaimer, this is anecdata, apologies for the generalisation.

<comment><USER22> > That doesn't happen here. Instead, the delivery guy usually helps you unpack > the item of delivery, and the plumber will offer his opinion on a job he was > not necessarily called in to fix.

And how much are you expected to tip these people?

<comment><USER21> optional. sometimes nothing. sometimes like $2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> When I visited Sofia, Bulgaria, it was amazing to see people carry bottles over to this square where there's natural hot spring water. The water really tastes great and it was so much fun just being around there. People don't seem to feel awkward about bringing lots of bottles with them and stocking up on water.

In Berlin, where I live now, there are fully functioning manual water pumps in some streets. People don't really use them much, but there's something quite charming about them too.

</comment><comment><USER24> Let's start with the assumption (not necessarily true) that one who drinks from a public water fountain consumes significantly more germs than one who drinks bottled water. Is this even a bad thing? I would think that this regular exposure could help strengthen the immune system.

I'm personally uncertain if anything like this is backed by research.

<comment><USER25> When I was elementary school age I saw some older kids at the park taking turns peeing on a drinking fountain (and laughing). I have used public drinking fountains since, but only when the need was severe.

There has to be a better option.

<comment><USER26> Construct outdoor drinking fountains out of materials that naturally resist bacteria.

<comment><USER27> Not sure why you were downvoted. This is both a good idea and is actually done: brass, which is commonly used for outdoor water fixtures, is naturally antimicrobial (including E. coli) due to its copper content: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_properties_of_co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_properties_of_copper#Efficacy_on_brass.2C_bronze.2C_copper- nickel_alloys)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> When I first came to US, I didn't mind drinking public fountain. But one day, I walked by one and a dog was drinking from it, licking all over it in the process. From that day onward, I stopped.

Still, I have to wonder: is that reasonable of me? And otherwise, is it expected to let your pet sharing the same water source with human?

<comment><USER29> Of course it's reasonable of you.

The burden of proof is on the water fountain (or more specifically, the designers of the water fountain) as to whether drinking from it is safe.

This is not a problem with being overly cautious. This is a problem with an antiquated design.

<comment><USER30> What exactly is antiquated about the design of modern water fountains? How could the designers of the water fountain effectively and reasonably communicate that the water fountain is safe to drink from, and do so for the design life of the fixture?

Sure, some water fountains _look_ old...but I imagine that if you live in a major city, odds are (from a logistical standpoint, unless you live in a new subdivision) the tap water to your house or apartment flows through pipes that are older than that water fountain. A dog drinking from the fountain is gross, but I'm not sure the onus is on the designer to totally prevent people from acting silly.

<comment><USER31> Good design can always find a solution -- off the top of my head, integrating some kind of sterile recyclable mouthpiece dispenser would assuage most concerns

<comment><USER32> In the case of potable water valves, this is accomplished by preventing backflow and being made out of a hard smooth material. When you turn on a drinking fountain, the stream of water flushes any loose dirt and debris, so as long as you avoid contact with the fountain (the stream should be adjusted so that this is easy), there isn't going to be significant transfer of anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I think it might be impossible for those of us who have used fountains, but now don't trust them anymore. I've seen people urinating/vandalizing fountains in Metro Detroit and would never use them again.

*I think someone mentioned this below too.

</comment><comment><USER34> In Denmark I rarely, if ever, see water fountains. If I saw one, I would never drink from it. For me, personally, it's a sanitary issue. There also seems to be studies that link them with pathogens and bacteria, wikipedia links to some[0].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_fountain#Cleanliness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_fountain#Cleanliness)

<comment><USER35> If you chase that link down, you find it is referring to the presence of pathogens on the handles of toilets, the surfaces of water fountains, and other moist surfaces like water play tables, in child day care centers. This is not the same thing as transmission through the stream of water itself.

My take away from that is to be careful of touching such surfaces, but not to worry about the stream of water.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Yeah, I stopped drinking at water fountains after I realized that half the kids I saw drinking from them were practically swallowing the spigot whole. It's not tap water I'm afraid of, it's the distribution device. It's a attractive breeding-ground for every form of nasty.

<comment><USER37> If you don't touch it with your mouth and run it for a few seconds you'll be just fine.

Also the human body spends all day killing most common bacteria, mold, and similar. You don't even know it is happening. If you got sick every time you came in contact with another person's bodily fluids then you'd be sick almost daily, you'd certainly never go out to eat again, or ride public transport.

My point is, your fears are entirely unfounded. Water fountains are fine.

<comment><USER38> This is a great point.

It's like the people that open the restroom door with a paper towel. They must realize that the people who don't was their hands touch all the other doorknobs as well?

I'd guess the bathroom door is probably the cleanest knob you'd encounter (since lots of people wash their hands before leaving).

<comment><USER39> Sidenote, when I finish drying my hands I use the towel to open the door. First, why not. Second, the handle usually has some water on it, and I just dried my hands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Besides health, there's pollution.

The opposite of a drinking fountain is The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, according to Wikipedia: _The Great Pacific garbage patch, also described as the Pacific trash vortex, is a gyre of increased marine debris particles in the central North Pacific Ocean located roughly between 135°W to 155°W and 35°N and 42°N. The patch extends over an indeterminate area, with estimates ranging very widely depending on the degree of plastic concentration used to define the affected area._

If you wonder where these huge collections of garbage come from, drinking bottled beverages contributes.

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

</comment><comment><USER41> Tap-water is very much a hit-or-miss here in Germany. In some cities (like Berlin) it's almost hazardous, while in other cities it's very drinkable. The tubes the water passes also make a big difference (there are still lot's of lead tubes lying around in old houses).

We got our-self a home reverse-osmosis filter system that clears water of most particles and drink very clean water with abandon (~1 ppm non-water particles). It's really a luxury worth having, especially with kinds. Plus, no carrying around bottled water.

And no, the lack of minerals in the water did not kill any of us.. that's a fable. In fact, your body will only absorb minerals from water it if it can't get it from other food sources that have them in a more optimal chemical bounding.

<comment><USER42> > Tap-water is very much a hit-or-miss here in Germany. In some cities (like > Berlin) it's almost hazardous, while in other cities it's very drinkable.

I'd like to see a source for that. Tap water in Berlin is perfectly fine and drinkable. Tap water is actually held to standards that are at least as strict as bottled water. The only issue that can possibly arise is that you're living in an old house that still has lead piping, though those are very uncommon today. If you're in doubt you can have your water tested for 20 EUR, if there's a pregnant person or an infant in the household it's free: [http://www.bwb.de/content/language1/html/blei.php](http://www.bwb.de/content/language1/html/blei.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> How sterile are water reservoirs and lakes? My guess is they're full of pooping and dying fish, bugs, god knows what. The big city nearby me pump drinking water out of the same lake they pump treated and untreated sewage into. The suburb I live in at least uses well water. My point is if the source of the water is full of living and dead animals and bugs then worrying about homeless people peeing on the fountain remains gross but is no longer a serious concern. Pumping that same water into a bottle and charging a large amount of money for it doesn't make the problem go away either.

</comment><comment><USER44> Here in Germany, water is the best protected good that we have - maybe apart from beer :o) - and that is as it should be. It usually tastes good and I use it all the time (stopped buying bottled water long ago).

In a bar or restaurant, tap water has to be free. They don't like that and try to sell you more expensive stuff, but the law requires free water. Great, isn't it?

I was indeed shocked by the amount of chlorine that I tasted in Californian water (I regularly work in Pasadena).

<comment><USER45> There is no water fountain at the Munich airport.

<comment><USER44> "There is no water fountain at the Munich airport"

True and not necessary. You may go to the restrooms and use the tap there. Sound a bit weird, but the water is as pure as everywhere else (make sure the tap is clean) and as the water flows more or less non stop, it is even very cold.

We usually refill our empty bottles there after security.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In some parts of China, (frequently older) people routinely spend an hour or more lugging empty bottles up mountain paths to natural springs in order to gather spring water for drinking. (The character for a spring is 泉 which is water 水 beneath a 白 which means something like white/clear/plain but was allegedly originally a pictograph of an acorn!)

</comment><comment><USER46> In Manhattan, almost everyone carries water bottles (CambelBak is common) or they refill their store bought water bottles which are carried in bottle pockets on their knapsacks.

Columbia University (at least some schools there) give out water bottles and have special water fountains which have an overhead spout that fills water bottles and has a LED counter.

</comment><comment><USER47> I don't trust municipal water sources because of the endocrine disruptors. [http://www.hhs.gov/asl/testify/2010/02/t20100225a.html](http://www.hhs.gov/asl/testify/2010/02/t20100225a.html)

<comment><USER48> What, do you think a plastic bottle isn't leaching things into the water?

<comment><USER47> No- As long as the bottles arent subjected to heat or direct sunlight: [http://web.archive.org/web/20050830052647/http://www.jhsph.e...](http://web.archive.org/web/20050830052647/http://www.jhsph.edu/PublicHealthNews/articles/Halden_dioxins.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I think this type of behavior might have a lot to do with it:

[http://gothamist.com/2014/06/12/water_fountain_or_dog_bidet....](http://gothamist.com/2014/06/12/water_fountain_or_dog_bidet.php)

</comment><comment><USER50> I'm currently staying at Switzerland and they have water fountains like at every corner (with a little bit of exaggeration). I absolutely love it.

</comment><comment><USER51> I drink more water than ever after buying bottles. I especially bring bottled water to places where they only have well water.

</comment><comment><USER52> hmmm article sites Causation but really means correlation.

"The disappearance of water fountains has hurt public health. Centers for Disease Control researcher Stephen Onufrak has found that the less young people trust water fountains, the more sugary beverages they drink"

\- That doesn't sound like an actual study to me, just a hunch....

<comment><USER53> Closest research I could find by Stephen:

[http://www.researchgate.net/publication/259824170_Perception...](http://www.researchgate.net/publication/259824170_Perceptions_of_tap_water_and_school_water_fountains_and_association_with_intake_of_plain_water_and_sugar- sweetened_beverages)

Can find the rest of his publications here:

[http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stephen_Onufrak/publicat...](http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stephen_Onufrak/publications)

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I wonder if San Francisco's ban on water bottle sales (at public events) will encourage more water fountains?

</comment><comment><USER55> Not mentioned is that much of the tap water in the US tastes _much_ worse than it did 30 years ago due to increased standards which require water districts to add more and more cleaning agents to the water. Cleaner tap water leads to greater use of less-clean bottled water.

</comment><comment> jest3r- Nestle hires the homeless to pee in water fountains?

</comment><comment><USER39> So much for drinking from the hose, I guess.</comment>


Fear – The Reason Why Most Of You Won't Start A Company - <AUTHOR> http://soentrepreneurial.com/2012/03/10/fear-the-reason-why-most-of-you-wont-start-a-company/

<comment><USER2> Nope. Lack of money trumps fear.</comment>


Ask HN: Are you programming on your holidays? - <AUTHOR> If yes, what are you building? <comment><USER2> Selection bias, many enthusiastic "Yes" replies here, but consider those who are offline/vacation aren't here to reply "No".

For your productivity and health, it's important to unplug and enjoy holidays - [http://qz.com/485226/this-is-what-365-days-without-a- vacatio...](http://qz.com/485226/this-is-what-365-days-without-a-vacation- does-to-your-health/)

For those that replied "Yes" wonder if the majority are from the United States, being it's the only "Rich Country" that does not require employers to provide paid vacation time - [http://cepr.net/publications/reports/no- vacation-nation-2013](http://cepr.net/publications/reports/no-vacation- nation-2013)

<comment><USER3> I agree that it's important to unplug every once in a while, but for some, programming is like reading. As an analogy consider a lawyer reading legal documents all day at work and going back home and reading a novel, it's exactly the same for me, working on my own projects is exciting and enjoyable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very much so. As a student, I have found that it is much easier to focus on my large personal projects in between terms, when I don't have homework and/or lectures every day to interrupt my coding sessions[1].

Edit: As for what I am building, I am working on a graphics editor written in Common Lisp, partially as a way to verify others' claims about Lisp's efficiency, and partially to see for myself how difficult it is.

[1]: [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/190891/programmer_inte...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/190891/programmer_interrupted.php)

<comment><USER5> Where do you go?

<comment><USER4> Portland State University[1], with a major in electrical engineering. PSU is, in general, not a very interesting college, with the exception of TheCAT[2]. TheCAT is, essentially, a small bastion for hackers of all types to gather together and work on various projects (incidentally providing IT support services for the MCECS college), and has been by far the most interesting part of PSU for me.

[1]: [http://www.pdx.edu/](http://www.pdx.edu/) [2]: [https://cat.pdx.edu/thecat.html](https://cat.pdx.edu/thecat.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yes, I usually get inspired on hobby projects during Christmas time. It's ok to sit home and ok to not do anything work-related, so it's perfect. I started a robot simulator this time. Usually I've done small games and one time I wrote a ray tracer.

</comment><comment><USER7> Heck yes. I'm supposed to be on holiday at the beach with my fiance but she likes to sleep in so I'm getting some programming in!

</comment><comment><USER8> Yep! Trying to write my very first programming language[1]. Aiming to have a legit GC (mark/sweep), a legit VM with bytecode (possibly stack-based to start out with), and familiar data types. Oh and I'm doing it entirely in C, because I have a special love/hate relationship with C that never seems to die. It's going slow, but very fun!

[1]: [https://github.com/sdegutis/Paladin](https://github.com/sdegutis/Paladin)

<comment><USER9> Any resources that you're using to help you implement this? Looks cool!

<comment><USER8> Sorry for not responding earlier. Setting noprocrast seems to have this as its major drawback, that I can't reply in a timely manner.

I don't have many resources. Only these two:

\- GC tutorial: [http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2013/12/08/babys-first- gar...](http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2013/12/08/babys-first-garbage- collector/)

\- intro to hash tables: [http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/aspnes/pinewiki/C(2f)HashTables...](http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/aspnes/pinewiki/C\(2f\)HashTables.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Always programming. During holidays I like to get familiar with new technologies to see what they offer. Exploratory programming I guess you could call it.

<comment><USER11> Yep!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Opposite to everyone here - it's a big, fat no from me. I'm taking the 10 days to spend time with my family and finish some books. I'm always on the feeds and seeing what's happening, but it is, in my opinion, very important to down the tools and have a break. It's the same reason I don't code on vacation.

</comment><comment><USER13> I wish.

My family is consuming my time and/or my hardware currently.

I have gotten to the point of buying a new laptop today. Just so I get my macbook back.

On the plus side my family seem happier. We're all well fed and I've socialised more this month than I have all year.

</comment><comment><USER14> If I could get off HN, yes.

</comment><comment><USER15> Yeah, taking the time to tidy up my personal site as well as learning some Go.

Had my last exam before Christmas so I've got a lot of catching up to do from a busy term without side projects.

</comment><comment><USER16> Yes. I'm getting my personal site together and trying to get a head start on a game project (more or less a clone of the classic Berzerk[0]) since I kind of sort of want to do the game a month challenge but given how slow I tend to be, seriously doubt I'll make it.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berzerk_%28video_game%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berzerk_%28video_game%29)

<comment><AUTHOR> I loved Berzerk - I remember playing the arcade version. Not much to it by todays standards but imagination filled in the rest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> All work and no programming makes me a dull boy

<comment><USER18> Yes, definately

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yes! I have been listening to a load of podcasts a few of which make me extremely worried someone is onto my idea so I'm coding like mad.

However, looking at it objectively, I think to pull off the execution of this project it will probably take 1-2 months of fulltime work. Anyone know where I can get, say, a hundred grand to help me start a business... If only.

:-)

<comment><AUTHOR> What's your idea? Even a vague pointer to the field that it is in?

<comment><USER19> It's about making money from the Internet :-D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Yes I am! Nothing serious though, mostly explorations of some tech stacks and tools that I don't have the courage to try out in the evening after work. But in the end I may boot up something non-trivial to wrap all up, if a find an interesting idea.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm working on the successor to my gothic RPG: Manor of the Damned! ... Think legend of zelda (SNES) meets Castlevania. :D

[http://www.TheHideoutGames.com](http://www.TheHideoutGames.com)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have 10 clear days in which I can dedicate myself to programming.

Also seeing Star Wars and watching a few videos and a little computer gaming, but mostly programming.

</comment><comment><USER22> I am not building anything in particular, but catching up on some online courses that I've been trying to complete all year.

</comment><comment><USER23> Working my way through Software Foundations. Though that might not be considered programming.

</comment><comment><USER24> Yes, no programming makes me dull

</comment><comment><USER25> Definitely - only time I get to work on my personal projects in between the daily grind.

</comment><comment><USER26> Yes, improving my household management software and toying with building a shell.

</comment><comment><USER27> Working for a startup, so yes.

</comment><comment><USER28> Not at all.

</comment><comment><USER18> Yes, I'm learning python and flask.Trying to write a simple webapp

</comment><comment><USER29> yes. also advent of code, because i didnt have enough time earlier.

</comment><comment><USER30> Yes, last time I coded maybe half of a real estate android app.

</comment><comment><USER31> Yes, personal projects (but also many other things as well.)

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm working through stockfighter.io, lots of fun!

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes, perfect time to catch up on open-source projects.

</comment><comment><USER33> Yes, for fun and some serious stuff as well.

</comment><comment><USER34> Yes. For fun. No serious projects though.

</comment><comment><USER35> yeah!

</comment><comment><USER36> iOS UI test automation using python, node and objective-c

</comment><comment><USER37> no

</comment><comment><USER38> everyday of my life!

<comment><USER38> building a realtime data management system for sites, apps, and themes. using angular, firebase, and codeigniter.

<comment><USER39> it was all good till you mentioned codeigniter</comment></comment></comment>


Is it healthier to live in the countryside? (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180531-where-are-the-worlds-healthiest-places-to-live <comment><AUTHOR> It's complicated:

> _City residents tend to suffer from higher levels of asthma,[1] allergies > [2] and depression.[3] But they also tend to be less obese,[4] at a lower > risk[5] of suicide and are less likely to get killed in an accident.[6] They > lead happier lives as seniors[7] and live longer[8] in general._</comment>


Ask HN: How much do you sleep at night? - <AUTHOR> How many hours of sleep do you average a night? How do you feel it affects your work plus non-work life? <comment><USER2> Every night I try to be in bed for 10:30pm, sometimes this drifts to and beyond 11 (but not often). Hardly ever past midnight.

My alarm goes off at 6am but I am usually awake from say 5am - when it is light, the alarm is just for reference really, not to wake me. My breakfast porridge cooks on a timer to be ready at 6am which encourages me to get up but it will keep warm so I don't rush, I take an hour for breakfast.

I don't sleep through, I usually go to the toilet about 3:30am, sometimes 1am.

Is that enough detail :)

I used to work until 4am and sleep half the day but I chose to shift to this circadian rhythm based pattern and not a stressful rush and I feel much better for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Found that 6.5 hours is perfect for me. I sleep at like midnight and snore my way to 6:30am when my alarm goes off. In that 6.5hr period, I don't wake up at all. I then go to the gym for about and hour and listen to music just doing nothing for 15-30mins before I start planning for work.

<comment><USER4> Impressive! How do you motivate yourself to go to the gym every morning? I tend to run in the evenings which is really nice now that the sun doesn't set until at least 9pm.

I really can't cope on less than 8 hours of sleep for extended lengths of time. It completely wears me down and I get tired and ill. Usually what happens is that when I get up at say 6:30am I am completely exhausted by 7:30pm. If I get up a bit later I can usually function until at least 10:00pm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I'm working-out regularly (cardio or strength training), I need the full 8 hours. If I'm just coding all day/night (to meet a deadline for example) and ignoring my health, I can average 4 hours without much of an issue.

</comment><comment><USER6> Never enough, last night I went to sleep around 1AM and was back up at 7AM; that is a good average for me. I am worthless until about 11AM but I have kids so I don't really have a choice if I want to get anything done.

</comment><comment><USER7> Around 8 hours. I don't bother even trying to write code unless I'm fully rested, which took me years to learn. Sleep is productivity.

</comment><comment><USER8> 6 - 7hours usually. I wish I got a full 8hours.

</comment><comment><USER9> 6-7 hours, but I would like to sleep 8-9 hours.

</comment><comment><USER10> between 6 and 8 hours. Every evening I ask myself wether I should do more today or tomorrow... I'm always wrong...

</comment><comment><USER11> 4-6 hours

I drink coffee all day long to compensate.

</comment><comment><USER12> About 8 Su-Th, about 9 on F-Sa

</comment><comment><USER13> 10-12 hours</comment>


The Myth of the Science and Engineering Shortage - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/the-myth-of-the-science-and-engineering-shortage/284359/ <comment><USER2> I think it is important to avoid using the term STEM and specifically dissect it in the discussions about shortage. Computer Science is a very peculiar part of STEM and not all of the STEM fields face the same challenges. As Hadi Partovi of Code.org put out eloquently in his testimony before Congress[1], there is a difference between enrollments in Computer Science and STEM in general. For instance, in US high schools, it seems like there is no shortage of students in biology or math, but CS is underenrolled.

[1]: [http://www.c-span.org/video/?317093-1/house-subcmte- hearing-...](http://www.c-span.org/video/?317093-1/house-subcmte-hearing- private-sector-stem-education)

<comment><USER3> _I think it is important to avoid using the term STEM and specifically dissect it in the discussions about shortage. Computer Science is a very peculiar part of STEM and not all of the STEM fields face the same challenges._

I think there's a bit of a rhetorical issue with this, though. The dominant narrative is that we have too many people doing _soft, fuzzy, weird, useless_ liberal-arts degrees. Studying things like literature, history, philosophy, political science. What we need is more people doing _hard, rigorous, mathematical, technical_ STEM degrees. Studying things like physics, biology, mathematics, computer science, chemistry.

If you admit that there is no shortage of mathematicians, though, you undermine the whole strategy of "we need more STEM, less liberal arts", because mathematicians are the rhetorical core of STEM: rigorous, technical, mathematical, non-fuzzy. If it turns out mathematicians are about as useful as historians (useful in principle, not directly in a major applied shortage), the whole narrative fails.

To a certain extent I think the whole STEM construction is based fundamentally on trying to hand-wave across this gap: math and physics are prestigious and perceived as hard/rigorous, while computer programming is in demand. The union (not intersection) of these two fields is STEM, which perceives itself as rigorous + hard + in-demand.

<comment><USER4> To add to this I was very surprised recently trying to hire Statisticians/Mathematicians for a computing data-sciency bioinofrmatics role to find that a couple of PhD students had no computing skills at all. No DB, no linux, no scripting.. just stat applications on Windows. Curiously a few of the best candidates I saw were from "soft" subjects like ecology, geography, social science - where they have real cutting edge statistical chops but were also used to dealing with databases, mapping tools, and modern computing infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Silicon Valley cartel conspirators helped to depress wages and increase unemployment. Universities have relied on cheap student and postdoc labor. Their game-theoretic strategy is cheap talking their serfs into the belief that they too may become masters.

ADDENDUM: downvoters can take a warm piss on a power line.

<comment><USER6> I normally just lurk, but I signed in _just_ to upvote him. Still laughing...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

John Adams US diplomat & politician (1735 - 1826)

<comment><USER8> brilliant - except the implication that liberal arts should be all we need by now

<comment><USER7> Rather than an all or nothing proposition, I saw this quote as an elegant framing of what the liberal arts are: nice-to-haves in the wake of ought-to- haves in the wake of die-or-haves. In the popular discourse, we aren't always afforded that sense of perspective.

<comment><USER8> Agreed

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What world is this article living in? I got a job making $100k as a software engineer, right out of college (top-tier I guess). And then I realized that I was worth more than that, and 8 months later I'm now switching over to a job making $150k in total compensation. And TBH, I was middle of the road compared to my classmates.

<comment><USER10> Why do you think all these silicon valley CEOs are throwing their weight behind schemes to get kids and adults learning how to code? It isn't because they really believe there's some social or personal value in being able to program, it's because they want to flood the job market with developers and so crash wages. What's sad is that many programmers are actually buying it, and volunteering their time to help support and evangelize these schemes.

<comment><USER11> CEOs who think just throwing more developers at a problem will solve it are what natural selection is for.

<comment><USER12> More developers might not solve a problem faster, but they will drive down wages (even for skilled developers)

<comment><USER13> There is a lot of crying and worrying about wages on here right now. If you are from CS or SE, you don't have the right to cry about a saturated job market driving down your wages. They are plenty high. If you want people with real problems, look at the graphic design industry. $10/hr can get you your pick of the litter among several applicants who have over 20 years experience in one of the biggest cities in the United States. Then imagine what it must be like for recent college graduates in the field.

<comment><USER14> Wages are plenty high in the States, or places like London. The rest of us are not on anything special.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like this article, but it does not delve very deep into why the current perceived shortage exists. On the public policy side, there is probably a belief that more STEM professionals will increase the economic competitiveness of the nation, even if there is a surplus. From technology businesses' standpoint, it is in their interests to have a surplus of STEM graduates in order to maintain or reduce wages.

<comment><USER16> >On the public policy side, there is probably a belief that more STEM professionals will increase the economic competitiveness of the nation, even if there is a surplus.

Except that it doesn't work, and it should be obvious why. There's no reason to bust your ass in college to enter a field the government floods with foreigners. The more people the government imports the less attractive the field looks to domestic students choosing a major.

I can't complain about my treatment as an EE and later a software developer, but knowing what I know now I doubt I would go into anything technical if I were graduating from high school today.

<comment><USER17> As somebody graduating from high school in a bit, I have to ask: what would you do differently today? It seems to me that, as somebody who can do comp sci reasonably well, that's my best option right now.

<comment><USER16> If I were going to do it today the first choice would be business degree and MBA from Harvard or Yale. I'd be willing to borrow what it took, because the payoff is there. In the US today this is the ticket to the C-Suite.

If I couldn't get in I'd try to get an ROTC scholarship for as prestigious a place as I could manage and graduate without borrowing money. Either business or liberal arts, though the latter case is a minefield of worthless programs, so it would require some research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Time to demonstrate once and for all the fraud that the H1B visa has always been. All it does is push older engineers out of the field so they can be replaced very cheaply.

That needs to stop but having the best congress money can buy pretty much assures that it won't.

</comment><comment><USER19> There is no shortage of bad programmers, there are plenty of medium programmers, it's also not that hard to find decent programmers. It's harder to find good programmers, but much harder to find great ones. The thing is that a great programmer can do 5X more than a good programmer, that can do 2X more than a decent one, that can do 2X more than a medium one. It's not just the number of features they can write in a given time or the fact they have less bugs or test their code better, or simply can do things no one else can. It's not even their ability to design better. It's their ability to do all that and influence the others to follow. I think there is a shortage in that kind of developers, and there is no school that teaches these soft skills.

<comment><USER20> Sorry, but that's nonsensical.

1 - virtually no supposed 5x or 10x programmer makes even 2x more. If people are really 5x, why on earth don't I see $300-$500k salaries? Particularly given the fall in communication costs ala Brooks, it would be an enormous win for employers

2 - at least in the bay area, there would be tons and tons of highly qualified candidates if moving to the bay area wasn't a financial nightmare (cost of living is horrific and the pay doesn't come anywhere close to making up for it); and if buying a decent 3 bedroom home and having kids didn't nearly require winning a startup lottery -- or at least enough for a good downpayment to get to a conforming mortgage.

3 - I'm in my 30s, and in my cohort of developers I know a number (all of them very skilled and in high demand in the bay area) who have moved to the midwest or austin because financially they're so much better off

4 - the majority of complaints about unavailability of developers, particularly in the bay area, are after the fact justifications to (1) cover employers not paying salaries commensurate with the cost of living, and (2) the ability to import (cheaper, more easily controlled) h1b labor

4a - with a side of companies ducking their responsibilities to america, the state they are in, and their communities to help create the employees they need. Now obviously I don't think 1-4 person startups have any such responsibilities, but somewhere between that and google/fb/hp companies have responsibilities to their communities and countries that bay area companies in particular almost completely duck. For example, why isn't facebook or google, in lieu of whinging about difficulty hiring (while illegally restraining wages, ain't that beautiful) running hacker schools themselves? It couldn't be because they'd rather let someone else pay for it and cherry pick the winners (saving money two ways)?

<comment><USER21> "1 - virtually no supposed 5x or 10x programmer makes even 2x more. If people are really 5x, why on earth don't I see $300-$500k salaries? [...], it would be an enormous win for employers"

Some reasons you don't see higher salaries:

1\. It's very hard to measure the difference in programming ability directly. Good programmers also tend not to realise just how much better they are, and are generally unwilling/unable to demand higher salaries (not because they're programmers, but because most people _by default_ aren't good at these things.)

2\. Good programmers tend to cluster around good companies, one of their advantages being that they're surrounded by people at their level. Think Google, Facebook. Over there, if everyone is as good as you but making the same as you, then you don't feel there is a disparity.

3\. Some programmers DO make 300-500k. You just don't hear about it.

4\. More importantly, some people make 300-500k in roundabout ways. E.g. some great programmers work as freelancers and make that amount, because that's one way to solve the problem of companies being unwilling to pay so much more.

5\. Some programmers with more business-fu start consultancies and startups, making lots of money _that_ way in a non-obvious way.

<comment><USER22> I don't buy the hard to measure argument. CEOs at large companies make a tonne of money. This is usually justified by saying that they are more skilled than the average CEO but this kind of skill is also hard to quantify. Why does this argument work for CEO pay but not programmer pay?

If there was really a shortage you'd see salaries for programmers going up. Instead there are documented cases of companies colluding to keep pay down. Based on the high salaries you could argue that America has a CEO shortage and needs to increase visas for foreign CEOs.

<comment><USER21> "CEOs at large companies make a tonne of money. This is usually justified by saying that they are more skilled than the average CEO but this kind of skill is also hard to quantify. Why does this argument work for CEO pay but not programmer pay?"

Because it's much easier to measure performance of CEO's, at least artificially. If Google does well, then you (supposedly) know that Larry Page is doing well. That's how the market treats it, at least. But can you really tell me that you're able to tell me which of the 10's of thousands of engineers that Google has is responsible for that success?

Also, there's the issue of leverage. Just like a programmer can build software that is used by millions, and therefore has a lot more leverage and creates more wealth, so a CEO usually influences even more customers than the programmer. Paul Graham has an article about exactly that - the idea of a startup is to give e.g. programmers a lot more leverage than they usually have.

And arguably, the fact that a few engineers can build WhatsApp and earn billions is an example of that in action - getting more leverage by building a company, proving success, then gaining the money it gives. But the average exceptional programmer, while being 10X better at programming, won't necessarily also be better at business or money generation, etc.

Lastly, the fact that there are cases of companies colluding to keep pay down proves the opposite of your point - that salaries _should have_ been even higher!

<comment><USER22> |Because it's much easier to measure performance of CEO's, at least artificially. If Google does well, then you (supposedly) know that Larry Page is doing well."

Originally I wrote a much longer reply but after re-reading it it came across as much more anti CEO compensation than I intended. I don't view short term market movements as an accurate reflection of company or CEO performance. If you willing to use easy to calculate but broken metrics I can supply a few for programmers. How about lines of code? This also ignores under performing executives getting big salaries and severance packages. No one is going to pay me millions if I get fired.

"And arguably, the fact that a few engineers can build WhatsApp and earn billions is an example of that in action"

I view employment at a startup like buying a lottery ticket. Someone is going to get a large payday but that doesn't mean they're better than someone that doesn't get one. Even with the possibility of a big payout your expected return is pretty low.

I think I stated the collusion argument badly so let me try again. If you're in charge of a major corporation and experiencing a talent shortage would you tell your HR department to exclude a large portion of the local candidate pool? That's what those companies did.

<comment><USER21> You raise interesting points. I'm honestly not knowledgeable enough to tell you if it makes sense to judge a CEO by the short-term, or even long-term, performance of their company. I don't think anyone really knows just how much is the correlation there.

What is clear is that, assuming CEO's _do_ affect the value of a company significantly, they'll tend to affect it much more than even the best programmers, especially at a company the size of Google. That's just an issue of leverage. So a (possibly semi-broken) method of judging whether you made billions for the company will still spit out compensations of millions.

As for startups, I was talking specifically about the founders, not employees. And yes, I agree that startup's succeeding, at least on the Whatsapp scale, is very similar to a lottery. But smaller startups/consultancies can make much more money for the programmers who start them, who have skills that the market cares about more than just programming well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Fundamentally, I don't accept that there is, in general, a shortage of "good people" in the USA. I responded earlier [1] to someone who thinks there is.

Instead of continuing to follow up with just that one person, I'd like to propose an interesting "experiment" for hiring managers:

       Do an Ask HN, linking to a recent representative
       job posting you haven't been able to fill

I'd like to see all the relevant details, such as:

1) the job posting, of course

2) company name, location, salary range

3) are the usual requested perks applicable, e.g. flex time, work from home, etc?

4) what kind of resumes are you seeing? How many? What, in general, has been wrong with those people?

Then I'd like to see HN posters dissect the information. Let's find out if the requirements are realistic. Let's find out if the company's reputation is toxic.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7452376](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7452376)

</comment><comment><USER4> Are wages purely determined by supply and demand though? There is a tale I remember about an economics professor who dumbfounds his class by pointing out that there is a huge surplus of economics students across the country who all want to work for Goldman Sachs. But the wages/bonuses don't fall to reflect the oversupply.

I think the same is true for doctors and dentists. Do very few people want to be company executives or politicians? Is there a scarcity? I don't think so.

Sometimes people are well paid because they are setting their own salaries (many believe bankers have hijacked banks from the shareholders), others are setting the rules within society (politicians), or interpreting those rules (lawyers), or just getting close to those who do (lobbyists, bureaucrats, special interests).

In short the wages of workers are dependent partly on their position of power within society .. of which supply and demand is just one element.

<comment><USER24> the set of econ students who want to work at Goldman is not the supply: the set of econ students that Goldman thinks will make them money is the supply, and I bet very few of them are unemployed.

similar: set of waiters who want to be actors is huge, set of known actors that a studio can say 'his face on the poster will bring in an extra 50 million cinema tickets' is miniscule. That's why all the waiters are acting for free in film student projects and Tom Cruise is a millionaire.

<comment><USER4> No. I don't believe a word of that. And your analogy undermines your own argument.

If you had said Michael Jordan or Lionel Messi ... but Tom Cruise? Really? Tom Cruise is a perfectly good Tom Cruise (a good actor) but a million other waiters could have been him.

There maybe Messi like geniuses in politics, banking, business but the idea that bankers are all paid Millions because "they are worth it" is to me ... laughable.

They are paid millions because they can get away with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Out of all those graduates, the number of which we are told is 2-3x the number of open positions, are really qualified to fill in those positions? Passionate about their field of study? Intended to get a job in that field in the first place, as opposed to getting a degree in something they can (afford)?

Our own experience is that even internships do not always yield good results. And the level of most applicants, many of whom are recent graduates, makes me sad. They manage to find work at some other company in the end, but only because we are in IT and IT is big at our place...

</comment><comment><USER26> All I know is from my own experience, and that experience is that I have recruiters calling up at least once a week and a few more via email looking for software engineers. I never got that kind of attention when I was working a cash register in retail, and my friends with liberal arts degrees certainly aren't getting it either.

</comment><comment><USER27> I do not work in IT. Family and friends think I should be a millionair because I am "so good with computers."

Worked in IT in the 90s for 18 months as IT Manager and well I went bald at 22. Did programing when I was 17 and well I woke up with ideas on how to do to fix my issue. To much stress and to little pay for the jobs.

Don't see the change for a "good" IT job for most people. When students start asking about the industry from people that work it they usually get a negative response and told to do something else.

</comment><comment><USER28> I thought the whole shortage for demand argument was to do with the lack of __talent __that was being produced, rather than simply the number of people who had a bachelors degree.

<comment><USER29> I don't know how many jobs I've seen out there where they have an incredibly high bar to hire someone, and then it is 99% CRUD work.

Some of the AI jobs at Google, yes, they need good people. Amazon needs some good engineers at the top guiding the creation of EC2 architecture. But most jobs ask for a much higher caliber of people than they actually need.

<comment><USER14> I don't get why CRUD work is so under appreciated here on HN.

I do CRUD work (at least I think I do - I create and maintain the database and front end for a DNA sequencing centre). I have in in depth understanding of SQL - my database returns some moderately complex results. I have solid database design and optimization skills. I know Django in depth. I know Python well. I have a solid understanding of Linux, and know enough to get Django running on the server. I have read up a fair bit on NoSQL, but have yet to find a suitable use case for it. I can do some Javascript / HTML / CSS.

Bioinformatics on the other hand seems to be considered a lot more brain power, when most of it is just scripts to count stuff an plot it on a graph. Its' (often) an order of magnitude simpler than what I do. The majority of bioinformaticains I know have never used a debugger - so the code can't be too complex - or they are WAY smarter than me.

Or when people talk of CRUD, do they mean the sort of thing you should use MS Access for?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> How does it look for other fields?

There is a misunderstanding on how jobs are made. Consider what these look like for history of English majors? STEM is in demand if you look at the areas with predicted job growth.

</comment><comment><USER31> Well, there _is_ a shortage of competent software engineers willing to sacrifice as much as corporate executives think they should, for what corporate executives think such people should be paid.

In the same vein, there's a shortage of supermodels who want to fuck obese, unemployed men with halitosis and general poor hygiene.

<comment><USER32> I think you're wrong. I have the hardest time finding good engineers, we pay very well, we don't expect anyone to work crazy overtime, etc.

Can we make this more concrete? What sacrifices do you think is being asked of competent developers? What pay do you think they are offered?

<comment><USER2> > we pay very well

How do you know, objectively? Have you tried paying twice (or more) the current market rate, for instance, and binary search for a point where you have enough happy hires and failed? Perhaps the market rate is artificially lowered.

<comment><USER32> The problem isn't that good engineers turn done our offers, it's that very few good engineers come in the door. The ones that have were very happy with their offers.

Edit: Didn't realize you weren't the person I originally replied to. Let's reverse your question. What is the objective basis for the claim that engineers are asked to sacrifice to much for too little pay?

<comment><USER29> The objective basis that you are offering engineers too little pay is that they are not taking your offers. Unless you don't believe in one of the first things they teach in modern economics - that at a certain value (price), supply will always meet demand.

<comment> FLUX-YOU Could just be a run of bad luck or not enough advertising on their part. Supply can't meet demand if supply doesn't know demand exists.

<comment><USER29> I agree about making an effort looking for people. I know nothing about the company being discussed here. But for other companies, I know some that contact a (crappy) headhunter or two, or who post an ad on Craigslist, and then expect top tier candidates to roll in. For some CRUD job working in class C office space for relatively not much money etc. They're shocked when they don't have their pick from dozens of top tier candidates.

If your methods don't work - try going to a local programmer meetup. Chat up some of the programmers. Encourage them to apply. I go to programmer meetups as a programmer, and all the time I meet other programmers who are out of work, or who are unhappy at their job and looking to work elsewhere. Most are employed, but there's always a few who are looking.

What is happening is this - in 2008/2009 the economy was tighter, and employers could get by with a CL posting, or talking to a headhunter or two. Now that unemployment rate is less than 10%, you don't have dozens of good programmers checking CL for jobs every day. You have to do a little more work to find people. Just like THEY had to do a little more work when unemployment was double digit.

<comment><USER32> Not only do we go to meetups and conferences, we host them. At some point you may want to consider the possibility that I know what I'm talking about.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>