Secret Fears of the Super-Rich - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2011/04/secret-fears-of-the-super-rich/8419/ <comment><USER4> We recently figured out that a major problem with the SIAI Visiting Fellows program has been that we don't give Visiting Fellows a context in which they know how well they're doing - they're picking up rationality tricks of the trade, but there's no counter that goes up when they do.

I suspect that rich people who _aren't_ just measuring their progress by net assets, acquire this problem with their entire lives - now that they're not holding down a job, they no longer have any sense of what constitutes "progress".

Existential angst mostly just consists of having one or more problems you don't know how to identify ("My life lacks obvious progress indicators" having not even occurred to you as a hypothesis for describing what's wrong) and so you find that everything you do to try to address the problems you _think_ you have, never solves the _real_ problem. <http://lesswrong.com/lw/sc/existential_angst_factory/>. If there's anyone out there who's reading this and thinking "Yes, that's me", you can go ahead and email me (Eliezer Yudkowsky) because problems like this really should be solvable. Similarly, now that we've figured out what was wrong with the Visiting Fellows program we're going to try to fix it, etcetera.

<comment><USER5> I have experienced a lot of the lack of progress indicator angst you mention. I'm nowhere near rich and it isn't that important of a goal to me in itself, but since leaving college at 19 (I'm nearly 26 now), I haven't had a 9-5 job. I played online poker professionally for 4-5 years and I've been a developer for the last 2. My development work has either been a set my own hours/work from home arrangement or contract work. I'd say the struggle to live with some kind of structure while also maintaining the high level of freedom and flexibility that I can't stand to be without has been the defining challenge of my life so far.

I'm very glad that I've been able to get out of the box and do my own thing, but it's also made life a lot more difficult in many ways. It's been harder to develop consistent social circles since these tend to center around college and work. Even though I'm pretty good at making friends, at least for a fairly introverted person, I rarely feel like I really fit with whatever groups I fall in with--I tend to go back and forth between feeling insecure and being bored and annoyed by others' seeming conformity and lack of imagination. A bit of social anxiety is involved as well.

I've also never been able to maintain a consistent circadian rhythm. At this point I've just given up on worrying about it and regularly stay up for 30+ hour stretches when I'm not tired or have a lot to do. I've found it easier to just go with it than trying to force myself into the 'normal' way. This also contributes to feeling weird or different from others though--just feels like I'm on another wavelength a lot of the time.

Not sure why I decided to share this exactly. I can definitely imagine having a lot of the same issues as a billionaire. I suppose that's why it doesn't seem a particularly worthwhile goal to pursue. I'd rather focus on finding a good creative writing group or learning to meditate or finding a place/way to live that helps me find more balance and belonging. Things that would have a tangible impact on my day to day being. Making a lot of money seems beyond a point to get in the way if anything.

I don't know if there's anything in particular to blame, but our society is quite exclusionary in many ways toward folks who go off the beaten path, even if they are otherwise kind and productive people with plenty to offer. Generally reasonable people can be very judgmental about things like not having a college degree or a normal job or typical sleep patterns. I've learned to take it in stride for the most part, but it leaves sort of a bad taste in my mouth. I suppose wealthy people may have to face some irrational prejudice from others as well.

<comment><USER4> Well, it sounds like you know the problem (you haven't found a community you like yet) and have ideas about how to solve it (finding a good creative writing group; I would also try science fiction conventions, hacker dojos, a Unitarian church and your local Less Wrong meetup). I can't think of much else to say - if you know where your problems are coming from, you know how to solve them better than I do.

<comment><USER5> Thank you, it's encouraging to get the sense I'm on the right track. Those all sound like good ideas. I think living near a hacker space would be ideal as a way to work independently but still be part of something. Some of my relatives are Unitarians and I've always admired the philosophy--it's like religion distilled down to the good parts. I haven't heard of Less Wrong but I'll check it out.

I'm going to move soon, most likely to SF or Oakland, where I don't have any real friends or contacts to speak of. I'm very excited at having the chance to fully restructure my life, but the wimpy worrier in me is worried that being alone will cause me to freeze up. Ah well, suppose all I can do is try :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship - be it JC or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles - is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things - if they are where you tap real meaning in life - then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already - it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power - you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart - you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

The insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing."

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/sep/20/fiction>

<comment><USER7> I can't stand this platitude that there are no atheists in foxholes. I have been inches from death and never questioned my atheist beliefs.

<comment><USER6> What an interesting thing to take away from the quote, maybe I assume too much because I've read the whole speech but certainly I did not think he meant to say what you are implying.

What I took from it personally is that people tend to find meaning in life from something - a deity, a job, money, fame, looks, their own business - <USER2> that it doesn't really which of those you choose you're essentially taking a leap of faith that it will deliver happiness.

<comment><USER7> David,

I find DFW's perspective interesting but overly didactic.

The above was not meant as a takeaway or summary of what he wrote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I found it an interesting read, perhaps a cautionary tale. I suspect that if you are an entrepreneur 'to get rich' and you succeed and find you are depressed all the time because you don't know who your friends are, some (possibly material) portion of your new found wealth will go toward counseling.

I had the non-unique experience of being a multi-millionaire for 2 weeks in the summer of 1999. Which is to say that on paper, in terms of options and restricted stock, and stock which was currently owned but embargoed (due to my companies acquisition) was 'worth' millions.

I really had to sit back and think hard about what that meant, would I retire in 4 years?, keep working ? join a venture firm? The stock went from $120/share to $0.83/share before I could sell any of it so I never had to actually answer those questions but I found that how I felt when I was 'rich' was different than how I thought I would feel. I don't know if that is a common experience or not.

I find the idea that someone wouldn't really feel financially secure unless they had $1b in the bank sad. But I looked at what Google paid for Eric Schmidt's 'security detail' and I realized that at some point you become a 'soft target' for people who would acquire money through violence or extortion. I would hope to avoid becoming one of those targets. I've heard that if you are ever in danger of acquiring too much wealth you can 'fix' that by buying an airline. (with props to Sir Richard Branson)

<comment><USER9> Reminds me of the evergreen Joseph Heller anecdote:

"At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch 22 over its whole history. Heller responds, 'Yes, but I have something he will never have . . . Enough.'"

<comment><USER10> That is an awesome quote. The viral r-factor here is at least 1.

<comment><USER11> What does that term mean?

<comment><USER11> So the "r" stands for what, repeatability? Where did this jargon originate (and more importantly, why do web searches only turn up insulation values)?

<comment><USER12> reproduction:

It is a math model for infectious disease [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_modelling_of_infec...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_modelling_of_infectious_disease)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Remember that documentary from about 5+ years ago about spoilt rich teenagers? I think it was called Born Rich. Anyway one of the things that one boy said really stuck with me (not sure what his name was but he was generally unhappy, and I think he later sued the publishers):

'People think because I'm rich I must be happy. But they don't realize that my happiness is connected to so many material things, if just one of them goes wrong it can ruin my day.'

Or something to that effect. More material comforts = more dependency for happiness = greater likelyhood of misery (or at least, 'peevement' or angst). He was talking about all the expensive toys that had to be maintained properly, special meals he liked to have, elaborate plans for essentially simple social occassions, and so on.

<comment><USER14> I highly recommend everyone watch this documentary. It was produced by Jamie Johnson (as in the heir to Johnson & Johnson) who interviewed his friends for their candid feedback on what it's like to be wealthy. None of them knew this would be a public documentary so they were pretty open without the typical political correctness.

Somewhat surprisingly to me, I found the most mature amongst his peers to be Ivanka Trump. She acknowledged her wealth, but at the same time made it clear that given her head start in life, she planned to work hard to make her own path in life. And judging from accounts from a couple people who went to school with her at Penn, she's pretty sharp. I liked her.

But most of the others seemed to fall into two groups:

1) At a loss for what they should do in life given the massive amount of wealth they knew they had at their disposal. One of the main concerns for this group is just not to lose the family's money. (Jamie Johnson himself and his father fell into this category)

2) An arrogant disdain for those not in their self-determined "class". This disdain is not necessarily reserved for the middle/low classes, but could also be applied to "new money" or those with just single/double digit million net worth.

All around, great documentary. Go see it.

<comment><USER15> Just checked, it's on Netflix Instant Play. Just added it to my queue. Thanks for the recommendation.

<comment><USER16> for the lazy: <http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Born_Rich/70008257>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I like this part:

 _One respondent, the heir to an enormous fortune, says that what matters most to him is his Christianity, and that his greatest aspiration is "to love the Lord, my family, and my friends." He also reports that he wouldn't feel financially secure until he had $1 billion in the bank._

I think this guy needs to crack open his Bible, and read a bit of Matthew 19:20-22...

 _[20]The young man said, "I have obeyed all of these. What else must I do? [21]Jesus replied, "If you want to be perfect, go sell everything you own! Give the money to the poor, and you will have riches in Heaven. Then come and be my follower." [22]When the young man heard this, he was sad, because he was very rich._

I can't think of anything more to say. I just hope I didn't just start a religeous flame war.

<comment><USER18> I would add that most commentators on this passage don't draw the conclusion "having money is evil," but rather, that Jesus saw that this man's attachment to his wealth was a problem. In hearing this command, the man realized that his wealth was his god, and though he wanted to follow Jesus, he could bring himself to give up this rival god.

This may sound like a "soft" interpretation because it allows for being rich and also spiritual, but then again, it also means that Jesus' implied indictment may apply to non-millionaires like me. If my focus is money or prestige or whatever, I'm in the same boat. You can't follow Jesus half- heartedly.

To your point of advice: it does seem that if you've got $50 million and it's causing you anguish, you could certainly get rid of it and do a lot of good in the process. And I imagine the stigma from regular people would largely turn to respect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm very suspicious of this piece. On the one hand, it's an interesting thing to read for those of us who aren't "super-rich" (if a bit... obvious). On the other, it feels like it's an apologia for the ever increasing class divide. "Don't worry about not having money, you wouldn't be happy anyway".

Honestly, I would be quite fine with a shitload of money and a meandering purpose in life. I think that's true of most people, including the larger subset of the "super-rich" that didn't choose to whine in an article in the Atlantic. _Most_ people have a meandering purpose in life anyway, and mixtures of reliable and unreliable friends. It's not something special royalty gets to lay claim to.

The primary difference appears to be that the royalty can choose who they want to be, where-as not all of the plebeians have that luxury ("dream it, live it" self-help bullshit aside, one still has to pay for food and shelter and dependents). And the poor rich children are depressed because they have all their options open to them...

I seem to be saying this a lot, but here it is again: cry me a fucking river. :-)

<comment><USER20> "Honestly, I would be quite fine with a shitload of money and a meandering purpose in life"

I think part of the point of the article was to say, "no, you probably wouldn't."

<comment><USER19> And my point is that I understood what the article is saying on the surface, but there's a definite subtext here aimed at those who are not as fortunate enough to be able to (easily) discard one ill-fitting "purpose"(vocation) for another that fits better.

Or in essence, I don't believe what the article is implying, and it has nothing substantial within it to make me believe it.

<comment><USER21> How about this take.

Happiness is relative, and your personal happiness likely settle down to the same place. So if you get a huge windfall (millions of dollars), you will be happier for a short term, but ultimately, your happiness will fall back to your normal levels. At that point you have different concerns, but you still have concerns.

<comment><USER22> "At that point you have different concerns, but you still have concerns."

Concerns differ in terms of criticality. "I lack motivation because I don't NEED to work" is a very different concern from "I work 60 hours a week and still can barely put food on the table". The former may seem like a major concern when it's happening to you, but from a non-relative perspective, it's still much less serious than the latter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There is nothing wrong with being rich and in many ways it can be a positive good in the life of any person to have the ability to shape one's time in optimal ways as opposed to being a slave of financial necessity.

But the perils of being rich are legion, as detailed in this interesting piece.

As I grew up, I always had to work for most anything I got and, in retrospect, I believe that the financial necessity that drove a good part of this was actually a big part of my character development. I always wonder what it would have been like on that front if I were continually faced with the temptation, as a rich kid, of bypassing the pain and difficulty of such challenges in favor of indulgences that were readily at hand. This must be an _enormous_ problem for young people who have inherited significant wealth.

In any case, this piece portrays those with some measure of wealth from an interesting angle and nicely highlights that all that glitters is not gold, even if it literally is gold.

<comment><USER22> "But the perils of being rich are legion,"

Your perils are legion when you're suddenly the target of a squad of ninjas, or surrounded by a hostile armed gang. There being a social stigma attached to being rich or there being higher expectations on you because you're rich are miles away from a legion of perils. "My friends look at me differently" or "I tend to take the easy road whens stuff gets hard" are drastically less severe of problems than "I can't afford my kid's medical bills" or "I'm having a hard time providing for my family while saving for retirement". Yeah, their lives have problems, but that inevitable - if our lives didn't have some risks or tradeoffs, we'd go insane from boredom. But their tradeoffs and risks are very far removed from their physiological and safety needs.

<comment><USER18> I think you're taking the situation too lightly. Is the threat of death worse than wanting to be dead, for instance?

If something makes you intensely unhappy, you would resent somebody else saying "bah, that's not a problem."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Relevant discussion/quote from pg from previous thread on "fu money":

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1511104>

"One thing you learn when you get rich, though, is how few of your problems were caused by not being rich. When you can do whatever you want, you get a variant of the terror induced by the proverbial blank page. There are a lot of people who think the thing stopping them from writing that great novel they plan to write is the fact that their job takes up all their time. In fact what's stopping 99% of them is that writing novels is hard. When the job goes away, they see how hard."

<comment><USER10> _When you can do whatever you want, you get a variant of the terror induced by the proverbial blank page. There are a lot of people who think the thing stopping them from writing that great novel they plan to write is the fact that their job takes up all their time. In fact what's stopping 99% of them is that writing novels is hard. When the job goes away, they see how hard._

That seems to be what college (esp. summers and spring break) is for, at least at a good school: giving you a sense of what life would be like if free from economic bullshit (as it is for the rich, the only people attending college 150 years ago). It's better in most ways, as only the most successful or wealthiest adults actually enjoy adulthood more than college, but college is not perfect. I had fun, but I wouldn't want to go back. And how many college students are writing novels, or even engaging in the amount of reading and writing that an aspiring novelist needs to be doing? A few, but not as many as who "want to write someday".

<comment><USER24> It's not the same, though: with summers, spring break, and even college, you know that you're time-limited, and have to scope your projects appropriately. With creative work, you have as much time as you're willing to pay the opportunity cost for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> A quote attributed to Rudyard Kipling that's been floating around the internet:

"Some day you will meet a man who cares for none of these things. Then you will know how poor you are."

</comment><comment><USER26> "But just as the human body didn't evolve to deal well with today's easy access to abundant fat and sugars, and will crave an extra cheeseburger when it shouldn't, the human mind, apparently, didn't evolve to deal with excess money, and will desire more long after wealth has become a burden rather than a comfort."

<comment><USER10> s/money/power

Power attracts the corrupt, and it does corrupt. This is why handguns are (for a certain type of person, i.e. those who are explosively impulsive) so dangerous. Holding one gives the power of life and death.

Being in power tends to make people arrogant, short-sighted, and less creative than they'd otherwise be. Power relationships are generally negative on both sides, thus worse than zero-sum.

<comment><USER27> "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."

-Abraham Lincoln

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> _Early in his academic career, Schervish was a committed Democratic Socialist. But around 1990, he began interviewing wealthy people and decided that his Marxist instinct to criticize the rich was misguided._

If Schervish had felt this way, it's because he didn't read Marx carefully enough. The whole point of Marxism is not "rich people are bad"—the _Communist Manifesto_ is brutally critical of those who think that capitalism could be reformed by making rich people nicer. The point is that _capitalism as a social structure_ is bad, because even well-meaning members of the bourgeoisie have incentives to oppress the working class, and those who do not follow those incentives will eventually find themselves at the bottom of the heap.

(I am not a Marxist myself, but this misreading is one of my pet peeves.)

</comment><comment><USER29> Great Read!

I am experiencing the awkwardness of a change in personal wealth as we speak.

I have a friend I met at 16 via a t-shirt venture. We would hang out & work on his company. As time progressed we would hang out off and on. After an extended gap in communication, I emailed him to get his number & he came by to pick me up.

We drove for about 15 to 20 minutes until we reached an office warehouse. He then told me, "welcome to his company". He had started what is now one of the country's top promotional products companies. He now owns a Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bentley, $3M home, and more.

I feel awkward around him & I think he feels the same at times. We are both entrepreneurs but he has had more success financially. I've since taken a major interest in philanthropy. I recently asked for a contribution toward my non-profit & it was amazingly awkward as well. LOL, I was sweating... I felt like a panhandler.

Lastly, when I ask how he's doing & about other things outside of business I feel fake. It's usually a general response as to not seem ungrateful as mentioned. But, I genuinely want to know.

Anyway, that's my experience with this issue.

</comment><comment><USER30> Has there been any research into why knowing this information in no way reduces my desire to be super-rich?

<comment><USER31> It's going to be different for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Nearly everyone who chases positional goods in a global context is bound to end up depressed. When you're in the habit of evaluating your wealth in comparison to people who are wealthier than you, two overarching considerations necessarily define your value:

* You're not wealthy enough; and

* There's always someone wealthier than you. [1]

[1] Caveat: In principle, _someone_ has to be the wealthiest in the world, which means the other ~7,000,000,000 people are not.

<comment><USER10> There seems to be a self-similarity at play where society looks roughly the same from a very wide range of vantage points. The elite see the elite within the elite and feel like outsiders in comparison. An important Buddhist meditation is a prayer of gratitude for being born human; how often do people remember how lucky they were to have human births, on a planet where we are 7 billion out of ~10^30 living beings (counting bacteria and plants, which Buddhists generally don't consider sentient but which are _living_ ).

Anyway, at the three-digit millionaire and billionaire level, it's all about score-keeping and social status for those who care at all. Most billionaires are not quite at the pinnacle of the social elite, and _no one_ stays at the tip-top of that for very long. Wealth is more stable, at the upper tiers, than social status, which is lost to age if nothing else takes it away.

<comment><USER33> Has anyone ever studied wealth distribution to see if it's fractal based? It would be interesting if human interaction followed the same design principals as natural formations.

<comment><USER34> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution#Application...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution#Applications)

<comment><USER33> [http://books.google.com/books?id=onNuF70-xRIC&pg=PR9&...](http://books.google.com/books?id=onNuF70-xRIC&pg=PR9&dq=pareto+fractal+wealth+distribution&hl=en&ei=dquLTZyxDMuD0QH9k42HDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CEcQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=pareto%20fractal%20wealth%20distribution&f=false)

"Pareto found that the distribution of income was well approximated by a log- normal distribution, except for approximately the upper 3 percent of wealthy individuals."

<comment><USER7> The Pareto distribution goes as a power law -- the same distribution as self- organizing processes.

<comment><USER7> Moreover you can generate a realistic wealth distribution via random auctions.

(Hopefully you are becoming inspired to do some agent-based computational economic modelling! It's fun.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I wonder how this article would read if one were to substitute 'smart/intelligent/clever' for 'rich'. I think I do spend a lot of time chasing knowledge to compete with others, only to find that I don't have 'enough'. As much as I like it, it does feel like I am living 'a life of quiet desperation'.

<comment><USER36> Really? I think having a hunger for knowledge is great. Knowing I'll never be satisfied ensures I'm not going to drift aimlessly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This was one of the more intriguing and thought-provoking articles I've read in a while. As someone who always had enough to get by, but never enough to spend without consequence, the goal of "being successful and having money" was always one I sought to obtain. While younger I always assumed all my problems would be solved by such a venture. I've learned that will never be the case on my own, but the concerns the wealthy state are interestingly complex - <USER3> more so than the standard concerns of a middle-income family/person. I can imagine the shock of a life of toil to get rich, only to find that your life and problems are exactly the same or even more complex.

The sole reason why being happy with the present will do more for you than anything else.

</comment><comment><USER38> My favorite part is towards the end, "rich stare into the abyss a bit more starkly than the rest of us."

Not being rich, but being able to use my imagination and reason to figure out logical conclusions, I have come to realize that it is not about what you have, or who you are, but about how you're being. In the end everyone dies naked and alone regardless of how much or little money/friends/love/whatever you have.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is this really "the first time" the super rich have spoken candidly about their lives? The film Born Rich is a counterexample.

Actually, the article contradicts itself: the byline says "the first time" and paragraph 2 says the studies have gone on since 1970.

</comment><comment><USER39> The thing I kept thinking of, especially whenever they were talking about "enough to be financially secure" was a quote from Ted Turner just after he donated a billion dollars to the UN. (I can't find the quote online, I saw it on TV)

It went something like this: "I've found that a person really can't spend more than $200 million dollars in their lifetime. Even if you make no attempts to save it or spend it wisely, it's very hard to squander $200 million so badly that you are left with nothing" (that was the gist, at least, but this is from memory)

<comment><USER40> How did Mike Tyson do it? He reportedly blew $300 million.

<comment><USER41> Bad advisors, bad friends, and bad investments.

If you've really got a fortune to squander, that's the way to do it.

<comment><USER42> That was only half of his problems. Divorce, a decent chunk of change. Battery assault? Rape? Decent chunk of change. People literally stealing money from you.

Tyson's problems had nothing to do with money. Money just made his problems more expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Also consider watching "The One Percent". It's about wealth and the expanding class differences. It's available to watch instantly on Netflix.

</comment><comment><USER44> > The fact that most people imagine it would be paradise to never have to work > does not make the experience any more pleasant in practice.

The financially independent often choose to work anyway - so why not just choose work you enjoy (or rather, find worthwhile/meaningful) in the first place?

</comment><comment><USER45> The issue is a non-issue, but still legitimate and interesting.

Stress, poor decisions, emotional tumult, and being flung into life itself are inexorable, and as unavoidable as breathing when you have a pulse.

Money is tangible, and as far as tangible things go..May well be at the top of the food chain.

In day to day life, and superficial observation of others, the tangible is our primary prism of experience and thought. It's not that this issue isn't "real".

The mind is so complex and our emotions so strong, we're (benignly) selfish and self-consumed to the point that day to day living and observation is done through the "tangible", as our primary prism of experience and thought.

Money/wealth takes on significance. It simply is significant. And always will he for those with and without.

But if we admit the ubiquitous behavioral pattern of our selves (as applicable to money as seeing an ultra good looking person walk down the street; or someone walk around with a 145 scored IQ test on their shirt..), we aren't dealing with wealth and money, per say.

A deeper but likely impossible study would be having the recording of therapy sessions with these people; and then juxtaposed with therapy sessions of non- SuperRich.

Dollars to donuts that those who are 'happy' and Super Rich bear striking resemblance, and actual distinct cross overs, to those 'happy' and not Super Rich. The converse being true for those 'unhappy' and all in between.

Perhaps there is a tipping pt in both poor/rich directions, at certain extreme ends; but in these instances, what are we dealing with, aside from the perks or poisons of 'luck' in a distilled form, that is life's ace up the sleeve and trump card.

And when it's just as possible to meet your wife while getting a latte, or choke on the biscotti you get with it...luck shouldn't be taken for granted, either.

Cliff Notes: when I am Super-Rich and still neurotic, i will simply blame myself, and move on in finding a year or two respite while penning an epic book and psycho-behavorial study on the rich and poor, vis a vis therapy sessions.

</comment><comment><USER46> The takeaway I have from this is that people are people, no matter their status: not sure if what they're doing is what they should be, insecure about other's love for them, never satisfied.

It reminds me that we're all people, all human.

Also reminds me of a bible verse (Ecclesiastes 9:10): "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom."

Whether rich or poor, happy or not, we all die.

<comment><USER47> _we all die._

That will probably be changing soon.

<comment><USER10> Singularity is not going to eradicate death. Aging, yes. That will probably be gone by the mid-22nd century, if not before. Death of the whole brain will always mean what it does today: the end of one's earthly existence. Mind uploading assumes there can be physical control over qualia, and there's absolutely no evidence for that.

In the middle 3rd millennium, aging will be gone and death will be rare (very rare, and exponentially declining so as to make humans post-mortal) but extremely traumatic when it happens. "Breaking News: 134-year-old honors student dies in lunar train crash." 4th-millennium humans will probably store their brains in _very_ safe repositories and control robotic, replaceable bodies through electronic telepathy. Some people alive will probably live to see this, and if I take my next rebirth here, I probably will as well. But I kinda hope not to "make the cut". A hundred years in good health I'd love, but I don't really want to wait around till the heat death of the universe to pass on.

<comment><USER48> _Mind uploading assumes there can be physical control over qualia, and there's absolutely no evidence for that._

Well, the alternative is magic.

<comment><USER10> My religious viewpoint, as a deist who believes existence in a higher power to be the most rational belief but denies the existence of "miracles", divine interventionism, prophecy or revealed religion: qualia _is_ a miracle, probably the only one in this world, and the only one we need.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> 'A vast body of psychological evidence shows that the pleasures of consumption wear off through time and depend heavily on one's frame of reference.'

I loved this single,succinct line.

</comment><comment><USER50> "He also reports that he wouldn't feel financially secure until he had $1 billion in the bank." ... "Such complaints sound, on their face, preposterous."

It may be preposterous for most anyone to feel financially insecure, given that it's possible to survive through couchsurfing and dumpster diving and what a high _historical_ standard of living this would provide.

The super-rich aren't the only ones who keep seeing their standards go up.

<comment><USER36> Agreed. Coincidentally this high historical standard of living is why it's possible for so many people to start companies on their own without needing access to large amounts of capital.

Although it might not seem like it compared to our super-rich peers, we are rolling in wealth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> A little off-topic but can anyone tell me why this story never took off when I submitted it 16 days ago?

(I've read the FAQ). Moderators please feel free to delete it if this is the wrong place.

<comment><USER52> what time of the day did you submit it?

<comment><USER51> In the early morning

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Humans are natural born problem solvers and we can't deal with not having any problems to solve.

It seems to make sense for people to continue working after getting rich, presumbably in a position of responsibilty, to give us a regular set of fresh chalenges. e.g. Steve Jobs doesn't quit even though he is extremely rich and also ill, he feels a responsibility to that position.

</comment><comment><USER54> Worth noting that many Silicon Valley nouveau-rich seem to derive great satisfaction from their activities as angel investors.

It seems to me this is similar to those in the article who "satisfactions of philanthropy", with the added bonus of having people who listen to your advice.

</comment><comment><USER55> For the most part, money doesn't create problems, but it can certainly enable and magnify them.

</comment><comment><USER7> ^ Best argument for progressive taxation.

<comment><USER45> Even better argument for communism, no?

<comment><USER7> Not at all what I meant. I'm proud to live in a capitalist society with a safety net. You can take a chance on a business knowing that you have limited liability and food stamps awaiting you at the "bottom" rather than something much worse.

I merely meant to imply that large amounts of wealth make a small (negligible?) improvement to the top .001%, and that much smaller amounts (like food stamps) can mean the difference between life and death to the poor. The productivity gains (due to dampening entrepreneurs' risk aversion) caused by refactoring wealth from the top to the bottom are another pro-transfer argument I meant to reference.

Communism does not create wealth as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> the irony here is a lot of people will read this...nod their head...and then get busy trying to get rich :)

</comment><comment><USER10> What I learned when I read this was that most rich people's lives are defined (just like most others' lives) by money, which is a depressing thought. A starving person's life will be defined by food-- organized around getting access to it, with constant intrusive thoughts about it-- but for most of us, it's not. We only think about food when we're hungry, we eat, and then we think about something else.

Most people who want to be rich want escape from money's grip, and it seems like that rarely happens. Either that, or freedom from money is not a monotonically increasing function of one's allotment and these people have overshot some sort of "sweet spot" at the level of the middling wealthy.

The grand takeaway was that living in a society ruled by money sucks even for those who have a lot of it. I wish the world were more like college in the sense that, when I was in college, I had no idea whether what my friends' grades were, and people weren't stratified into socially insular tiers based on GPA. The difference between a 3.9 and a 3.2 wasn't socially divisive in the way that the difference between $20 million and $7.50 net worth is.

<comment><USER57> I wonder if there's a selection effect at work here, in that the majority of people who end up being very rich _are_ those whose lives are defined by money. After all, why would you work your ass off to make more money than possibly can have a meaningful influence on your life unless you were driven by the idea of money alone?

<comment><USER58> It depends on the person here.

1\. Imagine a dude who just wanted to build something cool. Craig Newmark, of Craig's List fame, for example would fall under this category. He's got enough money to retire, yet he still works customer service, because that's what he enjoys.

2\. Now imagine, someone who just wants more, more, more, more. It appears Donald Trump might fall into this category. I don't know for sure, but he seems to be purely driven by money and power.

You can become wealthy 'organically' in the sense that you didn't set out to be wealthy. You can so get wealthy from the expressed intent to get wealthy.

<comment><USER59> True, but I don't see Craig Newmark getting angsty because of his wealth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> _Enormous wealth takes care of so many day-to-day concerns, that the remaining ones grow that much more frustrating._

It's hard for me to be sympathetic about this. They forget that the non-super- rich have all their same frustrations, plus the day-to-day "concerns" (read: money worries).

</comment><comment><USER61> The main difference between the stresses of the super-rich and the stresses of the super-poor is that the rich have problems that they choose to have, and the super-poor have problems that are forced on them.

The rich people could eliminate 100% of their stresses if they simply chose to change their lifestyle.

The super-poor can't really eliminate their stress by a simple change up their lifestyle, if the mortgage isn't getting paid, the car broke down and you need medical procedure you can't afford and have no options, then these stresses are WORSE stresses than the rich have.

The rich may have it worse, but it's their own darn fault for making it worse.

<comment><USER62> The real poor would love to worry about mortgages and cars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> link bait. "Super-rich" in the title when it was only 25M threshold for the article. 25M is hardly getting one into "rich" category. At 4% draw it is 1M/year, just 5-10 times a salaried employee level and even less than that if a family of 2 earners is considered.

<comment><USER64> The average person in the united states makes 2-3 million over the course of _their entire life._

<comment><USER63> yes, in 2004 the income was median - 44K/year, mean - 60K/year, which is only 25-16 times less than 1M/year (25M equivalent at 4% draw). 20 times more than average isn't "super-rich", it is even hardly just "rich"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> "Why should we labor this unpleasant point? Because the Book of Mormon labors it, for our special benefit. Wealth is a jealous master who will not be served halfheartedly and will suffer no rival--not even God: "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon." (Matthew 6:24) In return for unquestioning obedience wealth promises security, power, position, and honors, in fact anything in this world. Above all, the Nephites like the Romans saw in it a mark of superiority and would do anything to get hold of it, for to them "money answereth all things." (Ecclesiastes 10:19) "Ye do always remember your riches," cried Samuel the Lamanite, ". . .unto great swelling, envyings, strifes, malice, persecutions, and murders, and all manner of iniquities." (Helaman 13:22) Along with this, of course, everyone dresses in the height of fashion, the main point being always that the proper clothes are expensive--the expression "costly apparel" occurs 14 times in the Book of Mormon. The more important wealth is, the less important it is how one gets it." - Mormon scholar Hugh Nibley

"The worst fear I have about this people is that they will get rich in this country, forget God and His people, wax fat, and kick themselves out of the Church and go to hell. This people will stand mobbing, robbing, poverty, and all manner of persecution and be true. But my greatest fear is that they cannot stand wealth" - Brigham Young

"Men of wealth among us, as elsewhere, who command their tens and hundreds of thousands, who have their every want supplied, have more anxiety, care and perplexity than many of you, who have to struggle for a comfortable living. And if you were placed in their position you would be a great deal more uneasy than you are now." - John Taylor.

Money is much more dangerous and troublesome than most people realize. These three quotes testify to that, as well as most of the production generated by rich people. Wealth destroys _many_ who finally get it.</comment>


Mistakes in Typography Grate the Purists - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/arts/16iht-design16.html

<comment><USER2> To think what presbyopia has done for my quality of life!

A couple of years ago somebody in the neighborhood book club inflicted on us an historical novel, Oprah-endorsed. One of the anachronisms was pages purporting to be from backwoods late 19th Century newspapers and set in sans- serif faces--for all the world like 1970s phototype.</comment>


Ask HN: How do HN webdevs ensure cross-browser support for websites/webapps? - <AUTHOR> Hi all, I'm starting a new project and I was just curious as to when HN thinks the best practices are for automated testing of support for multiple browsers.
Selenium looks interesting, but I want to do a bit more research (as I'd rather avoid replay testing within a browser), and am having trouble finding any alternatives.
Something that came to mind is scanning the code base to look for unsupported JS calls (e.g. `Object.entries`), CSS selectors/properties (e.g. :not(X)), HTML tags and attributes, etc. but I haven't seen anything about this.
I'm sure there are lots of creative solutions, what do you use? Why do you use it? What are the pros and cons?
Thanks. <comment><USER2> Something that has helped me is using my own device farm for my top target devices and AWS device farm due to the large amount of supported devices: [https://aws.amazon.com/device-farm/](https://aws.amazon.com/device-farm/) along with using Robot Framework and Xcode or Android/JetBrains software for deeper debugging and testing for full automation as I just do not have the time to do stuff manually anymore.

</comment><comment><USER3> You're having trouble finding alternatives, because there isn't really an alternative method. What you call 'unsupported' turns out to be well supported today; this is the reason selenium is so good at this job.

<comment><AUTHOR> Neither Object.entries nor the File constructor are supported in IE11. WebRTC support was only introduced in Safari 11, for example. As much as I'd like to only have to support modern standards, a large portion of people use outdated browsers. If we assume 10%, we would have to either provide additional support to those customers in the form of helping them download a new browser, or cut them off completely. That's a massive decision.

While I agree that these features are well supported, they're not well enough supported to use carelessly.

<comment><USER3> Are those "large portion of people" your customers? If not, they don't matter.

IE11 in general does not matter.

Use statistics to make decisions about feature adoption, do not generalize or guess... that's a straw man that'll burn in a meeting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Apparently yes, they are. That was the reason I raised the question. Anybody with access to a phone or computer is a potential customer, and we've had IE11s and Safari 10s walk past. If you'd like another example, look at native date pickers. Safari 11 still doesn't have one.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Managed Kubernetes Node Groups for EKS - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/containers/eks-managed-node-groups/ <comment><USER2> Still waaaaay behind GKE and never likely to get closer.

GKE supports multiple versions of nodes and today began offering release channels to further simplify version management. There pool and node limits are far greater. Why does AWS require yet another CLI "eksctl" other than to vendor lock-in?

I still have yet to see anything on EKS that can match GKE.

<comment><AUTHOR> EKS has certainly been lagging behind GKE for a long time. I think that this release acknowledges that and closes the gap somewhat.

To address your other comments: * EKS has automatic updates on the roadmap, which I imagine is similar to release channels on GKE. * GKE Limits. Yes, they are much larger than EKS, which I guess matters a lot if you have a requirement to scale horizontally to thousands of nodes. * eksctl isn't necessary to use EKS, but they do encourage it. I personally use Terraform and kubectl. It's essentially a wrapper over the AWS CLI. For GKE you would use the gcloud tool. For EKS you can use the AWS CLI or eksctl. It is an open- source tool built by Weaveworks btw: [https://eksctl.io/](https://eksctl.io/)

<comment><USER2> I think the gap is growing still.

They've had auto updates for nearly two years. Release channels enable you to pick a minor version and stay there.

Other nice features from GKE

\- gVisor is a checkbox

\- istio is a checkbox

\- knative is a checkbox

\- Cloud Run is a checkbox

\- Custom CPU/Mem/SSD/GPU/TPU (this is more EC2 v GCE)

\- extra hardened OS

\- automatic credentials for GKE from Cloud Build

\- service account binding between IAM and k8s

\- Anthos!

\- Labels for understanding costs and multi-tenant billing (internal or external)

GKE is free compared to the nearly $150 / month AWS fee that no one else is charging.

Oh, and the Google Cloud runs on 100% renewables. When will AWS be able to say that?</comment></comment></comment>


Apple to Launch a Global Law Enforcement Web Portal by End of 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://www.macrumors.com/2018/09/06/apple-to-launch-law-enforcement-support-program/ <comment><AUTHOR> From the second paragraph:

The web portal will be available globally as part of Apple's new Law Enforcement Support Program, which the company detailed on the Government Information Requests page of its privacy website this week [0].

[0] [https://www.apple.com/privacy/government-information- request...](https://www.apple.com/privacy/government-information-requests/#)</comment>


What Microsoft can learn from Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/what-microsoft-can-learn-from-apple-2009-5

<comment><USER2> The best advice to Microsoft: just survive the moment. Apple is in its high time. People love apple period; No matter what Microsoft does at this time he is the bad guy until the wind blows in a different direction.</comment>


Re-analysis of vials sealed in 1953 shows Miller-Urey more successful than they knew - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/10/old_scientists_never_clean_out.php <comment><USER2> Creating amino acids isn't really has difficult as it was thought to be back in the 50's. Amino acids that aren't known on Earth have been found in various meteorites and the like. Although they can be considered bio-markers, they aren't very good ones.

</comment><comment><USER3> Except that it doesn't. It only shows something about Miller-Urey + 55 years extra reaction time. The experiment needs to be repeated for anything new to be known about it.</comment>


Enough with whiteboard coding interviews - <AUTHOR> http://blog.indextank.com/1030/interviewing-engineers-enough-with-the-whiteboard-coding/

<comment><USER2> "When you come to an interview with IndexTank, bring your laptop. Be ready to sit down and create working code" - How is that much different from writing code on the white board, maybe I missed the point.

<comment><USER3> Coding on the whiteboard is something that you never do in real life (unless you're a CS teacher, in which case you're not really making it up). It can throw people for a loop.

Back in the 80s I couldn't write code without a copy of the programming language manual handy. Today I can't code without an internet connection. Asking people to code on the board requires dumbing down the questions to the point that it introduces way too much noise; you can't wait forever while someone tests their code.

If I tell you something like: here's the Twitter API, here's the twitter Ruby gem. Given a Twitter user, give me the most common word in their last 100 tweets. 15 minutes, show me what you got. That tells me much more about your abilities to _do something useful_ than reversing a linked list on the board.

<comment><USER4> But I do psuedo-code on paper, and that's much the same thing. I'm not saying everyone does so, on paper or elsewhere, but it's just one way that some people think. I would never go as far to say that no one writes code away from a keyboard.

And if you ever are asked to code on a whiteboard ... do it in psuedo code, and see what happens. Maybe the response will help you decide whether you want to work there.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Programming is Difficult (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://joearms.github.io/2014/02/07/why-programming-is-difficult.html <comment><USER2> In my experience, the overwhelmingly most difficult thing about programming is writing code that makes sense, even after it has gone through a couple rounds of requirements changes and bug fixes.

Any concrete coding task can be dealt with straightforwardly enough, but projects as a whole tend to deteriorate by arbitrary fixes, maintenance patches, and failure to uphold a conceptual schema.

The idea of composability is a good approximation to what it means for a program to make sense. If any part of the program can be understood as a sensible composition of parts, then the program probably makes sense.

But so many parts of real world code bases seem to end up incoherent. You look at a function and instead of seeing code that obviously, say, maps the render function over the list of widgets, you see three obscure conditionals, an apologetic comment, a bug tracker issue number, two boolean parameters named "force" and "dontRenderLast" (for some reason), and so on.

This is why I think the ideas from "domain-driven design" are so important, including the notion of a ubiquitous domain vocabulary. Also the FP idea of denotational semantics. And that well-known benefit of unit test driven design.

There's not enough recognition and clear understanding of this problem, in my opinion. We all know the problem, but somehow we don't talk about it enough, and don't acknowledge it as an enormous problem for development speed, programmer happiness, agility, and so on.

<comment><USER3> Do you think that sort of a problem (incremental changes eroding an initially sound structure) could be fixed with better refactoring tools? It seems like the issue you're describing is that logic is leaking from some parts of the codebase to others, which might be fixable with sufficiently powerful refactorings.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I think the sheer manual friction of moving things around is a big impediment to change.

But also, I think there has to be some conceptual basis for us to be able to think about factoring in a clear way, and that kind of intellectual labor is hard on another level.

Eric Evans' book on domain-driven design has some examples of programming tasks that generate confusing and unclear code, until the coder together with the "domain expert" reaches some kind of epiphany—like "ohh, if we think of these three things as being parts of the same kind of thing, then this part of the program makes more sense."

A program is a kind of philosophical theory about a certain topic, and if the theory isn't very clear, then you'll end up with a lot of special cases and obscureness even if you have unit tests and refactoring tools. They say naming is the hardest thing in programming and that becomes more true when you start to introduce any level of abstraction.

"Design patterns" were an attempt to create more general small theoretical pieces, above the syntactic level. In the FP world, a similar vision is that algebraic and categorical abstractions can provide some of those pieces. We still haven't seen much of what algebraic abstractions can do for ordinary programming...

But these abstract pieces, I think, are pretty crucial if we want programs to be understandable as anything but arbitrary collections of procedures and types. So yes to refactoring tools, and yes to more discussion about design patterns—it didn't end with the Gang of Four! read Christopher Alexander and Richard P. Gabriel!—and yes to more inspiration from mathematics and engineering and philosophy and all kinds of stuff, to provide inspiration for factoring—yes to study of logic and language and ... I'm getting carried away.

<comment><USER4> Very smart comment. I've had a long brake from programming and all this functional and lisp stuff is new, and it is not always clear what is the benefit. But is great to see a diversity and experimentation.

<comment><USER5> Lisp is actually the second oldest programming language (behind Fortran.)

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_%28programming_language%2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_%28programming_language%29)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't think programming - in the sense of what 99% of programmers do - is as difficult as programmers love to blog about. Most professional programmers write stuff that is not all that hard, and most of it has been done by others countless number of times. All the "hard" cutting edge stuff is done by a tiny tiny fraction of programmers. Heck even the things people think are cutting edge now, just taking a random example - VR, have been explored decades ago. Seriously, go read some SigGraph papers.

However, programmers more than other professionals love blogging about their work, which is great - because it helps spread ideas (more so than any other field I've seen), but also creates this illusion that programming is this super hard thing. I mean people complain about going to interviews and being asked about algorithms and stuff that you could "just google" when, if you were to ask an average scientist, the amount of active working knowledge they have at any given time is simply astounding.

<comment><USER2> There is another kind of "hard" though, which involves managing growing code bases, doing programming within a business setting, and so on. We mostly let the scientists work on well-defined problems in isolation, so they can really focus on those deeply intellectually challenging things, but even if those scientists are very clever I don't think they are necessarily good at larger- scale system development.

There are lots of jobs that are harder than mine in some sense, but if you look at the objective of building high-quality complex software in the minimum amount of time, keeping it running correctly, and then being able to change that software as effectively as possible, then that in itself is pretty much an infinite problem. Maybe there is lots of scientific work to be done to help us struggling coders, and maybe we need to get our shit together more as a profession... It's not all easy.

<comment><USER7> > but if you look at the objective of building high-quality complex software > in the minimum amount of time, keeping it running correctly, and then being > able to change that software as effectively as possible, then that in itself > is pretty much an infinite problem.

The same can be said of almost any "high-quality complex" project in any other profession.

<comment><USER2> Agreed. It's interesting to compare software with other "intellectual labor" like law, government, writing, architecture, philosophy, accounting, and so on. Many of the same problems seem to come up. Programming as a profession is very young, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is much easier to prove a particular program function correct when complexity is properly handled, this is the true art of programming, handling complexity in a way that makes sense.

Many complex phenomena in nature is explained by very simple mathematical equations, likewise great engineering design is achieved when there is nothing else to remove, and in order to achieve those results, a great deal of effort and thinking has to happen first.

The thing is, as the author put out, the environment is just too hostile in order to design beautiful programs, from the insane expectations of what can be done, to incompetent peers, politics, distractions and what not.

If you are skilled, you can define a problem in a precise way, be able to dissect it in smaller problems, solve them and prove the solution correct.

What is ultimately hard is how to handle the hostile environment you're usually stuck with.

</comment><comment><USER9> _Programming is difficult because it is easy_.

Here is what I mean. Implementing new functionality where nothing existed before _is_ easy: just figure out what you want the machine to do, and tell it to do that. It isn't trivial, but on a relative scale, it's easy.

Precisely _because_ it's easy to create functionality, we do a lot of it. Our programs grow. As they grow, they get complicated. As they get complicated, it gets to be more and more difficult to understand what they're already doing so that we can make them do something different. So, the less tongue-in-cheek version of my thesis here is that _programming gets to be difficult because it starts out being easy_.

This is why I always say that the essence of software engineering is _the management of complexity_. And this is the part that people who have not actually worked on large programs will probably never understand. (As someone once said to me, "what you need to get is that management views programming as primarily a _clerical_ function".) Viewed one-by-one, the tasks seem simple. And yet, somehow, when you put them all together, they're not simple anymore.

<comment><USER10> > This is why I always say that the essence of software engineering is the > management of complexity.

Your point is valid, and you can delete the word "software" and make a more general point that is also true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Sleep. A lot of programming problems get solved while you sleep.

I love it when I go to bed mulling over a problem, and when I get up I have the solution. The brain is truly a wondrous machine!

</comment><comment><USER12> I think the author nailed it on the head with the Workplace parts about why programming is difficult. The physical/socio-political environment that someone is in compounds the normal issues in the programming process and I've seen it drive quite a few programmers to straight up quit when the mountain of issues became insurmountable. Without the freedom to tinker and explore a bit, as the author bemoans, I think that it's when programming becomes a chore and

At my last job, I think the only time that I had ever seen our programming team actually happy to work on a project was when by chance and via a minor mutiny, we were able to break them away from the minutia of constant maintenance and repair and let them actually just work on a project with no expected outcome. It was an alternative path for our identity management solution and the entire project was a challenge to the managers for the Enterprise team. Our programmers were down-right chipper at the prospect of just being able to flex their creativity and try something just to see if they could do it.

<comment><USER13> I am thankful that at my current job, we do get some time to experiment here and there.

Begin tangent:

I work for a university doing grant projects for a few state and federal agencies, though. Some might like it, some might consider it hell for an entrepreneur. It works for me :-)

We are in the process of re-writing our "flagship" app from 10+ year old java libraries. We were able to dodge the bullet of "upgrading" (???) from Struts to JSF. The new app is going to be a services based (REST + JSON) Java (mostly) back end, with an Angular based front end. We just did a demo of a subset of the new app at a trade show where a 3rd party app imports a partial record (via web service) into our app, then launches a nested browser window to run the rest of the relevant data entry. (the rest of the workflow will be handled by the legacy app until the complete new version is finished)

No, I couldn't persuade my coworkers and supervisor to discard Java entirely and go with Node.js :-) I'm not entirely sure I would be comfortable with that, either. We are doing some server side Javascript lately, though, by using the Java scripting engine interface.

We will likely soon be redoing another (30 or so year old) app from a sister university that the state uses, as well. Interesting times!

For almost 5 years before this, I worked at a financial services company. I got paid a bit more (bonuses), but I spent all my time, really, keeping 2 legacy applications going without ever getting to spend much time REALLY updating some sore spots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The most important line from the author is "it takes time to be a good programmer". Those nights of debugging and reimplementing will decrease as you better understand how to develop code.

Also I find open concept offices terrible to work in. I'm not the type of person who can put on a pair of headphones, blast music and pump out code. I like solitude as I think though the problem and code. Unfortunately for me, the open concept is here to stay it seems.

<comment><AUTHOR> I love that line as well. I just told a friend of mine that if I spend the next 10years writing 3 languages exclusively (one per domain of systems, web/mobile application and high concurrency distributed systems) I would hopefully probably be a "good programmer" as I envision it. That might be a tall statement, but that's just _my_ interpretation of how it takes time to become a good programmer, YMMV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I see these posts every so often: "X is hard". Aside from just illuminating the X, I don't really see the point of the posts. Most higher-order jobs are difficult, that's why people train and educate themselves to work in the field. Coding has it's own set of challenges, but I don't think anyone is saying coding something slightly complex is easy. Just like how designing a building is hard, or swimming an olympic time is hard, or solving a complex science equation is hard. If I'm being honest, these posts come off a little whiny.

</comment><comment><USER16> The bigger question is, why are we still programming the way we did 20yrs ago? Higher level languages were a great improvement over machine language. But what comes next? Why don't we have it yet? A decade ago I was setting up database, writing queries, designing forms, writing the code to wire it all up. I still have to do all these steps with more amount of effort today.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think Backend-as-a-Service providers are a good step towards a place we want to be, although I still think we're not super close to using such services to deploy complex business logic on.

Services like parse cloud code and AWS lambda are another step closer.

Context: We (me + couple of collaborators) are writing a similar platform for ourselves, although the purpose is dogfood more than $.

<comment><USER17> Aws lambda does look like a particularly large innovation regarding complexity management. Anyone have stories on using it to share?

<comment><USER18> Nothing amazingly innovative, but I've used it a lot at work. For simple jobs/event processing it is amazing as it removes a load of complexity (logging, monitoring, scaling, deploying).

Lambdas tend to be < 100 lines of Javascript which means maintenance and rewriting is trivial. And because the jobs are so simple people don't need to be Javascript experts or aware of the JS ecosystem to write them.

Lambda is also very cheap if you have bursty or just very low-volume workloads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> >code that produced it should be cleaned up and documented before the next project was started.

A major why waiting to the end to test document and clean up code is a failure.

Write beautiful, tested code from the start. Even throwaway code, because half time prototypes, etc end up production.

<comment><USER20> At most places I've worked there's not much point in documenting everything meticulously at the start. The users don't know what they want yet, and they won't think through the details until they get the first prototype.

What makes sense in testing and documentation is really project dependent. What's right for flight control software is very different from what's right for Yet Another Twitter Clone.

<comment><USER19> I mean programmer documentation, how to build this thing, why was this choice made, what ideas were attempted and abandoned and why, what gotchas, what shortcuts were taken/tech debt incured. A lot of this should be in commit messages and/or "tickets" refed in commit messages. Rest goes into README, code comments.

User docs are completely outside my realm as a software developer.

My point (and strongly held belief) is NO, when you do testing and documentation is not really project dependent. All projects need to do it from the start. Some, flight control software, need more rigorous process. Everything needs to be viewed through ROI. My contention is too many devs underestimate the return of "doing it right" from the start. and overestimate the effort and effectiveness of doing it later/at the end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think for those programming complex systems in business and industry, the biggest problem remains how to represent concepts in code.

Even the simplest problem, like a Purchaser placing a Purchase Order for a Product from a Supplier can't be easily modeled and programmed by the majority of software developers - with any sort of predictability based on prior art or their own experience.

At best, we approach a problem with a combination of modular procedural code (modularity via subroutines)(from the 1950's) and structured programming with functional decomposition (from the 1960's).

There is no shortage of technical prowess, but a warehouse system is not based on design patterns, libraries, frameworks, or technologies. Instead, it is based on people, places, things and transactions interacting together to solve a problem.

How to represent real-world concepts and systems (real or abstract) into code, remains the challenge it always has been. We just don't seem to learn any lessons from the past.

</comment><comment><USER22> All good points, but this is not just specific to programming IMO. I work as a sales engineer for a networking company and I face the same issues as you when I work with customers who use our products. Documentation is never good, you're always solving customer problems so you never really have time to dig deep (read 391 page manuals are out of the question), new features are not described correctly and when I try to lab things up (demo or otherwise) there are about 100 things that can go wrong (I made up that number but you get the idea).

Great article though- I think it applies to most technical roles.

</comment><comment><USER23> _Now I find no particular joy in implementing archaic and perverse protocols but often the quickest way to progress is to re-implement them from scratch._

whaaaa

</comment><comment><USER24> The author and a number of commentors seem to be saying that incremental changes eventually lead to tangled and unmaintainable code. My litmus test for the quality of a code change is the amount of code it allows me to remove. If a change results in many other parts of the code collapsing or getting simpler then I know I've made a good decision.

</comment><comment><USER19> I believe author means things like code, build system, etc when they say "inputs are beautiful". Cause In my experience one of the major inhibitors of beautiful code, what takes many tests, and what makes dev hard is how fucked up input is. Esp user, as in interactive human, input.

</comment><comment><USER25> If David Sedaris was a software developer...

</comment><comment><USER26> It is not difficult, trust me. I know C, C++ , Java and Phyton. It is all about logics and the only thing that differs is the syntax. Get in touch I might help you

<comment><USER19> Too many guys like this are what makes software dev hard. Too many yahoos who think its just about code. Code is only an implementation detail of how most dev is done today. Even today, code isn't about the code. It's about explaining your program, your process, wtf you where thing when designed this thing to the next guy/gal.

Sadly, what too much code tells us is "Design? That's what gui people do, right? I just kept typing stuff until it worked enough for non-technical person to think it was OK or we ran out of money/time."

<comment><USER25> So much this. My cohorts and I aren't spending hours talking about why we should use es2015 or typescript or whatever else. We're spending hours nearly coming to blows over how to properly implement a Flux architecture.</comment></comment></comment>


RaftLib - <AUTHOR> http://www.raftlib.io/ <comment><USER2> Just checked this out. Took a bit of getting used to direction wise if you're accustomed to Go...but this is freaking awesome!

</comment><comment><USER3> Great library. I use it all the time. I hope the authors the best. Can't believe they do this for free.

<comment><USER4> all the time? I've used it for image processing. Seems decent. As good of performance as rolling my own. Waiting for multi-node support.</comment></comment>


Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 9 - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/10/week-in-microsoft-windows-7-windows-8-windows-9.ars <comment><USER2> 128-bit addressing is great and all, but it's completely useless (for the near future) unless we have finer-grained pagetables. Give me the ability to do very, very fine-grained pages (let me bring it down to 16 bytes if i want to) and suddenly a lot of new things open up. For a long time, I've been thinking about representing 3d data spatially in memory using virtual memory mapping, but the granularity of existing systems makes it extremely inefficient.

</comment><comment><USER3> I personally liked this one - _Symantec sponsored a study by Dennis Technology Lab which concluded that Norton Antivirus 2009 is superior to Microsoft Security Essentials in on-demand scans as well as real-time protection._

</comment><comment><USER4> This whole "128-bit windows 8" story has to be the dumbest piece of "reporting" I've seen in a while.

Firstly, who is even working on 128-bit processors? Secondly, what is the source for this news? At best the hint of a rumor. Thirdly, what industry need does 128-bit processors satisfy?

All around it points to a lack of critical thinking and skepticism, if not straight up naivete, gullibility, and ignorance bordering on incompetence on the part of the "reporters".

This line strikes me as amusing: "Consequently, the company [MS] is also forming relationships with major partners, including Intel, AMD, HP, and IBM." Newsflash: MS already has close relationships with each of those companies. There are many "business partners" from each of those companies who effectively work on the Microsoft campus.

At best this "revelation" is about the Itanium processor (which uses 128-bit instructions, though it retains a 64-bit word length and address space), in which case it is not only boring but horribly misleadingly recharacterized.

<comment><USER5> Reminds me when consoles went from 8-bit to 16-bit to 32-bit to 64-bit and then sort of stopped (Dreamcast mentioned that it was 128-bit for a bit). Sounds like the author of this article is a bit nostalgic for his former console days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> can anyone explain to me, why we need an 128-Bit OS anytime soon? I thought the problem with 32bit was mostly about memory address space and 64bit solved that issue for good.

<comment><USER7> Because processor technologies aren't designed the weekend before they're shipped. AMD's x86-64 technology (aka 64-bit) was publicly announced in 1999 (see: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit>). It likely was in planning stages years earlier.

When was the first time you _needed_ x64? (i.e. when did you run into the 4GB ram wall?) This year, maybe. Last year at earliest. That's more than a 10 year gap from when a technology was conceived and when it was needed.

<comment><USER8> Well, according to Wikipedia, 32 bit architectures started to come around in the 60s. We reached the 32-bit memory wall in some applications at earliest 1990. Thats 30 years to go between the first 32-bit archs and the "topping out of them." Then, you need to remember that this is an exponential change in address space, not a linear one. 2^64 is MUCH MUCH bigger than 2^32, you can't just think of it as "twice as much." In the 60s, they thought 4 billion bytes would be much more than they would ever need, but 32 bit's headroom was just 1000 times more than the biggest they used in that day (assuming 4MB, even though IBM's System/360 could access 8MB, which in that case the headroom would only be 500 times as much memory). 64 bit tops out at about 17.2 billion GB, and if we estimate that today's common RAM size is 2GB, the headroom we have for 64 bit is about 8.6 billion times what most computers have commonly today. That means that the headroom for 64 bit is 8.6 MILLION times the headroom that was in 32-bit. For some reason I think that it will take us much longer to fill up 64-bit than it did for us to use up 32-bit.

<comment><USER9> _this is an exponential change in address space, not a linear one_

To be fair, Moore's Law describes an exponential change in _usable_ address space that we're still living through.

The numbers are kind of spooky. The stupidest statement of Moore's Law is "everything doubles in size, at constant cost, every 18 months." If we take that statement literally, and also assume that the reaching of the "32-bit memory wall" became a widespread phenomenon around, say, 2009 [1], a backwards extrapolation suggests that the RAM industry should have begun in 1961 with a single byte. This is _frighteningly close_ to agreeing with actual history. [2]

The implication is that another 32 bits only buys us another 48 years. After that we'll need a 128-bit address space in order to properly index our personal catalogues of _everything ever_. [3]

Or, perhaps, at some point we will just get tired of making RAM.

\---

[1] This is when _I_ first noticed it. Yeah, people with millions of dollars hit this wall in 1990. Must have been nice to be them.

You will note a certain degree of slight-of-hand in my numerology here. ;)

[2] Intel's first memory product was a 64-bit unit in 1969. In the fantasy modpunk universe where Moore's Law was operating during the Sixties, that would imply a starting point of a single bit in 1960.

If we reject my narcissistic assertion that _nobody important_ cared about the 32-bit memory wall until this year, and instead accept oomkiller's assertion that the 32-bit memory wall first appeared on the radar around 1990, that would push back the birthday of the first bit to around 1941. I give you Wikipedia:

 _The [Zuse] Z3 (1941) was the first working machine featuring binary arithmetic, including floating point arithmetic and a measure of programmability. In 1998 the Z3 was proved to be Turing complete, therefore being the world's first operational computer._

Cue the _Twilight Zone_ theme.

[3] We probably won't need that 256-bit address space in 100 years, since there are estimated to be only 2^266 atoms in the observable universe.

<comment><USER10> Exponential growth is unsustainable. In a universe where the infinite does not exist (either big or small), we are strictly bounded by things. At some point Moore's law will show it's true colors (a logistic curve) and taper off.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to Respond to Company Hiring in Bad Faith - <AUTHOR> I am a grad student that recently took a 3 month internship at a medium sized startup. After tendering a leave of absence from grad school, vacating my apartment, moving across a large country, and paying for a short term rental in a high cost market, the startup laid off all contingent employees and is still operating with statutory employees. This literally happened within 5 minutes of reporting for work. I am at the start of my post-grad career so I don't really want to start legal action, but my total financial impact is greater than $20k in lost wages and time. Does anyone have advice?<p>I am hesitant to provide much additional detail at this time but I am also uncertain how to proceed. <comment><USER2> Not a lawyer. Itemize the list and costs. Gather up any emails, letters, contracts, agreements, etc.

You can potentially pursue them in small claims court (limits may be higher then you think), where the costs are relatively small, or talk to a lawyer, an initial consultation may be free.

You can also send a letter to the company, saying that you relied on that offer of a job for a specific period and suffered financial damage (detailing it) because of there misrepresentation or omission of material facts, and requesting they pay such and such an amount to compensate you.

Finally your state labor relation board or whatever may agree you have some claim on your one day's wages.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Start legal action" may not be possible at all. If it is possible, there's a range of possibilities in between "lawsuit" and "do nothing." If the company has hard-to-argue with legal duty to pay you then a letter from a lawyer might suffice.

Step 1: talk to startup, say "this is not cool" and see if you can get them to cough up some money.

Step 2: If that doesn't work find a labor lawyer and just asking them what they think. They'll probably be able to say "don't bother" or "I can write a letter for $X, but it probably won't work" etc. without you having to pay upfront.

In parallel: assume it's a loss and find some work.

</comment><comment><USER4> If your story is true, what do you have to lose by publicly naming and shaming this company? They might offer you some compensation to repair their reputation.

<comment><USER5> You can gain a life-long reputation of being "difficult".

<comment><USER4> No one has ever gotten such a reputation strong enough that I became aware of it. I've seen many examples, however, of companies responding to public shaming by doing the right thing, or some semblance of it.</comment></comment></comment>


Blorgit: Org-Mode based, git amenable, blogging engine - <AUTHOR> http://orgmode.org/worg/blorgit.html

<comment><USER2> As the author of blorgit I'm surprised to see it on HN this morning. That page was created 2-3 years ago, and I don't think blorgit gets much use these days.

I'd recommend just using the publish interface built into org-mode (see [1]). I use the publishing interface to generate both my home page [2] and my lab's wiki [3] (which runs off of a git backend using post-update hooks). These have the benefit of no dependencies outside of Emacs+Org-mode.

Also, as another commenter pointed out, org+jekyll works well.

[1] <http://orgmode.org/manual/Publishing.html>

[2] <http://cs.unm.edu/~eschulte/>

[3] <http://wiki.adaptive.cs.unm.edu/>

</comment><comment><USER3> A better approach is github(jekyll) + org-publish. I run my blog <http://www.codeherb.com> with it. Source at <https://github.com/anisaraf/anisaraf.github.com> . It can take some time to set up - depending on your emacs experience. Once set up, it is relatively painless to publish articles(it still doesn't mean that I blog as much as I would like to :P).

<comment><USER4> Hmm, looks interesting. How did you set that up? Pretty much <http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-jekyll.html> ?

<comment><USER3> Yep - mostly followed that I think. Once you set up a basic blog, then you can keep tweaking things over time. Get a simple version up and running and then tweak as per your liking.

The nice thing about spending the time setting it up is that once it's all done it is really quick to publish. All you do is create your post in org mode, Alt-x org-publish and then git push, and your post is live! I tried posterous before this, but getting all the syntax highlighting/formatting right was just a pain. With emacs + git, everything flows smoothly. In my opinion, well worth the time it took to set things up.

<comment><USER4> Heh not sure if you followed my profile and found my blog, but that's exactly why I am looking for an alternative. It really improved when they added Markdown support[1], but Common Lisp isn't a supported language. Also, embedded gists display horribly on aggregated blogs.

Thanks for the tip.

[1] <http://blog.posterous.com/announcing-markdown-support>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was excited until I read that:

        Be sure to install Ruby 1.8 (should be default option) not Ruby 1.9.

(and then I remembered I have nearly nothing to blog about anyway.)

<comment><USER6> I'd personally prefer an org-mode blogging engine which didn't rely on ruby & emacs running on a server.

Much rather have something that worked like Jekyll or Hyde in doing static html generation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Emacs-lisp is near non-negotiable if you want to have full org-mode.

You can use sandboxing to limit the security brain damage. I like LXC: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LXC></comment></comment></comment>


1916 Guide Shows What the First Road Trips Were Like - <AUTHOR> http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2016/05/20/this-1916-guide-shows-what-the-first-road-trips-were-like/ <comment><USER2> My friends and I actually road trip like this! We drive a 1930 Model A from town to town, and because of its maximum speed (about 50-60mph), we can't take interstates or main roads. Well, we could, but it's better to avoid it.

This means that when we say something like "let's go from Panama City to Charlotte", we must plan the entire route beforehand, much in the style of these books. And it's definitely necessary to have a navigator to point out the turns correctly; it is still difficult to navigate on, e.g., tiny backwoods Alabama roads. The directions end up being quite long; when I saw that there were only 40 directions from Fort Morgan to Denver, I thought that was fewer than what we usually get in our ~140 mile days!

What makes these trips really interesting is that we have to go through towns that are not served by the interstate system (and in some cases do not even have U.S. routes going through them). This, combined with the fact that we often come to a stop to fix something, means that we meet a lot of interesting people and discover interesting parts of the country that none of us knew existed.

We also stop at old bridges and take pictures in front of them:

[http://ratml.org/misc_img/saluda_bridge.jpg](http://ratml.org/misc_img/saluda_bridge.jpg)

Anyway I know this comment is quite long at this point, but, I highly recommend road-tripping like this to anyone and everyone! I have learned more about the rural Southeast in three weeks of roadtripping like this than in ten years of living here.

<comment><USER3> It warms my heart to see proof that such people as yourself still exist.

<comment><USER2> Personally I had no idea such experiences were possible until taking a trip like this was suggested by a friend (who is the owner of the Model A). The people we talk to (or more accurately the people who talk to us) are from a different time, and remember when travel was very different. We've heard a lot of fascinating stories.

For me it is very enlightening to realize that the technology sphere in which I live is actually only a very small part of the world!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There used to be guide book for African American travelers called the green book. It helped them know places they could use the bathroom, eat, and lodge.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_Motorist_Green_Boo...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_Motorist_Green_Book)

<comment><USER5> Even in Canada _today_ you can still see instances of this. Fairly disgusting, to put it mildly. I found this out when we employed the one person of color in the community as a gas station attendant, the reverse situation sketched in the wikipedia article linked. Large customers would contact me and pointedly demand we fire the person or they'd cease doing business (this was fine with me, the nearest alternative was a 90 km round-trip and not serving them for a couple of weeks taught several of those customers expensive lessons about racial intolerance, I suspect that they did not change their mentality even if outwardly they eventually relented and begged to be served again).

Assholes.

<comment><USER6> How long ago was this? I thought you were a technology consultant living in the Netherlands.

<comment><USER5> 8 years. And yes, you are right but it wasn't always so... I've lived in Canada between 2003 and 2008.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's worth noting that Michelin guides, which date back to 1900 in France, were actually launched with the same idea in mind: [http://tedium.co/2015/04/09/michelin-guide-unusual-side- busi...](http://tedium.co/2015/04/09/michelin-guide-unusual-side-businesses/)

Long story short, the guides were created to drum up interest in tires—by encouraging customers to actually take their cars to go on road trips. The fascinating part about them is that the guide's reputation at rating restaurants became so strong that the fine dining guides turned into a huge side business for the company.

<comment><USER8> Oh, so that's why they call them Michelin stars!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > It's ironic that nearly a century later, after decades of relying on road > maps and atlases, so many drivers have gone back to turn-by-turn directions > as their preferred navigational aid. If only Siri could flag the landmarks > and throw out some trivia along the way.

Yes! This is exactly what I would love. Be able to tell Google "tell me about interesting things within two miles of my route" and then have it start to learn what I like by which things I actually stop at.

And while we're at it, how about calling out cheap gas along the way. :)

<comment><USER10> Google does publish an app called Field Trip that they acquired from Niantic. It tells you about historical tidbits for the place around you. Doesn't seem to have been updated lately.

[https://www.fieldtripper.com/](https://www.fieldtripper.com/)

<comment><USER11> I used Field Trip for a while and really liked it when walking around in an unfamiliar city. As you say, as you went along, it would point out interesting facts, landmarks, etc. Then I noticed that its focus seem to change to "You're near Hardees! Here's a two for one coupon!" I deleted the app and never tried it again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Back in the seventies anytime I took a trip out of state my Dad would get me a AAA trip book. Each page had a short section of the highway and in a yellow marker it would show exits, towns etc. You'd flip the pages over every 40 miles and people referred to them as flip books.

I found them to be quite useful but now they seem kind of quaint. It would show gas stations and motels at the exits. Every year they'd publish a new one, wish I'd saved one now but they were really meant to be disposable.

We aren't very far from the days that Google/Alexa will ask as you start the engine where do you want to go today and just take you there with little effort on your part. In a way its like we're all going to have robot chauffeurs.

<comment><USER13> It's called a TripTik[1] and it still exists. I remember them well. My grandmother and I took a trip across the US in the 1960's. They were invaluable.

[1] [http://www.aaa.com/travelinfo/maps- directions.htm](http://www.aaa.com/travelinfo/maps-directions.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Amazing how things we take for granted now were simply unnecessary in the past:

 _Road signs were virtually nonexistent, Bauer says, because until cars came along there was no need for them. Long trips were made by train, and virtually all short trips were made by local people who already had a mental map of the roads in their area._

<comment><USER15> This is particularly visible in Europe, where magnificent centuries-old buildings are constantly scarred by road and parking signs (as well as advertising billboards).

<comment><USER14> Indeed, every time I visit "old" Europe I notice how street signs tend to be (a) small, and (b) attached to buildings; but it never occurred to me until reading this article that this could be largely explained by the fact that they _didn 't need_ street signs until recently.

<comment><USER16> I can't say I remember a building in Western Europe where traffic signs were mounted on buildings. In cities it's either on or at the edge of sidewalks.

<comment><USER14> I'm talking about names of streets, not traffic signs.

<comment><USER17> See Strasbourg for example: [https://email@example.com,7.7525392,3a,49.9y,21...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,7.7525392,3a,49.9y,213.71h,86.3t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sBguApRE6YIa3d2ZweTpFMA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Also of historical interest, particularly for the American south:

"The Negro Motorist's Green Book"

Locations of "sundown" towns, where to get a meal at a restaurant, where you can get a motel room.

[http://www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/Race/R_Casestudy/87_135_17...](http://www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/Race/R_Casestudy/87_135_1736_GreenBk.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER19> Strongly recommended: _The Men Who United the States_ , by Simon Winchester. Covers more than just roads, though that's included.

What's impressive is to realise how _recent_ most modern US travel infrastructure is. The Interstate Highway System wasn't _begun_ until 1958.

[https://www.worldcat.org/title/men-who-united-the-states- ame...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/men-who-united-the-states-americas- explorers-inventors-eccentrics-and-mavericks-and-the-creation-of-one-nation- indivisible/oclc/827260063)

</comment><comment><USER20> Think about how gloriously empty were the roads everywhere in the world: there were only 1.8 billion inhabitants. Out of every 7 people, imagine 5 vanished. That was the world then.

<comment><USER21> There were less roads too.

Near here is a monument to something or other, the improved US highway was built as a 10 mile bypass through a swamp. There's 4 glorious, split, full shouldered lanes carrying a few hundred vehicles per hour. It's still empty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> So driving back then was a bit like rally driving where you had a driver and a navigator, and unless you were adventurous, a mechanic, unless one of them knew enough to fix the car. Kind of reminds me of Bonnie and Clyde who picked up the mechanic because their car was so unreliable.

</comment><comment><USER23> Got this book at the Crater Lake bookstore. It's great. [http://www.amazon.com/Playground-Trail-National-Park- Park/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Playground-Trail-National-Park- Park/dp/0967135133)

</comment><comment><USER24> Should be called 'Rupert Murdoch's National Geographic Experiment dot com' No desire to see anything to do with him, as there is ALWAYS an agenda there. This is not a political statement, this is fact, he manages to ruin a lot and National Geographic is another one in a long list of them. Sorry.</comment>