ReachNow – BMW car sharing service in Seattle - <AUTHOR> http://www.bmwcarsharing.com/ <comment><USER4> Hi everyone, we built the end to end technology that powers ReachNow - <USER2> apps as well as the operations engine. The in-car hardware was all BMW. We're kind of like an operating system to run new mobility and transit services. I'd be happy to answer almost anything :)

Shameless promotion:

Android app: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.reachnow.c...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.reachnow.carsharing)

iPhone app: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reach- now/id972572486?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reach- now/id972572486?mt=8)

Also, we are hiring: firstname.lastname@example.com or [http://www.RideCell.com/careers.html](http://www.RideCell.com/careers.html)

<comment><USER5> Could your services be used to manage private car-sharing networks? For example, a group of neighbors or residents of a gated community put their vehicles in a car-sharing pool? Mostly would be used for grocery runs or road trips with the same start and end location.

This concept might be a good opportunity for US sunbelt retirement communities where traditional ownership doesn't make sense due to the car sitting empty in 100F+ all summer long. In some of those communities there are plenty of shaded parking spots under the solar panels.

<comment><USER4> Yes it can. I completely agree - both in dense urban cities with very little parking and in retirement communities, universities etc private car-sharing networks would be a win-win for residents and the folks managing the community.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yet another reason to hate the San Francisco City Government -- they killed DriveNow SF by refusing to issue a (fairly common in most cities) bulk parking permit to BMW DriveNow (basically, all the cars would be bundled into one account and would pay parking tolls collectively -- either based on estimated usage or observed usage.)

<comment><USER7> Given that San Francisco's parking situation is not like most cities, what makes you think this was a mistake? As opposed to a reasonable choice you just happen to disagree with.

As far as I can tell, they were asking for permission to park anywhere. Maybe there's a general-case problem there to solve for, but I'm not sure why "by- the-minute car rental for rich people" is a pressing problem for the city government to solve given the long list of other possible priorities.

The city has certainly been very supportive of car sharing in general; I've been a user in SF for more than a decade and the city has done a lot to push it forward.

<comment><USER8> Care sharing reduces demand for parking spaces and promote public transit which is generally considered a good thing.

<comment><USER9> And San Francisco has upwards of 1,000 on-street car sharing parking spots all over the city;

[http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Car-sharing-firms- gett...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Car-sharing-firms- getting-900-S-F-street-parking-5387271.php)

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately these spots are currently allocated to services that almost entirely do A -> A carsharing, meaning you have to return the car where you picked it up. This all but eliminates the possibility that users can use these services for short trips with long stops (e.g. going to work, going for a shopping expedition that will take some time etc) because it is cost prohibitive.

Having met the SF leadership I know they are working on this, and it's a difficult political issue, but I hope San Francisco can allocate more on- street parking to free floating carsharing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why provide premium cars and then cover them in decidedly non-premium ReachNow stickers? I'm surprised this service is actually _by_ BMW.

I understand wanting to use your cars for marketing, but at least do what zipcar did: don't place any stickers on the driver side so the driver feels like they're getting into a premium car.

<comment><USER11> They are the cheapest models BMW makes. They are premium compared to other shared cars (Car2Go!), not compared to BMWs.

<comment><USER10> Sure, but BMW's branding is that they only make premium cars. This would be a bit like Apple plastering its iPhone SE or Apple Watch Sport in poorly- designed stickers because hey, it's their low-end model.

<comment><USER11> I just walked around and saw a bunch of their cars and thought it was neat that there were so many. If they weren't labeled I would have had no idea. At the moment it's great advertising.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> a-robinson It's not clearly advertised on their landing page, but it looks like the lifetime registration fee is being waived for a limited time, so if you're interested at all you should consider signing up now.

<comment><USER4> This is true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I just walked around downtown Seattle and saw about a half dozen of their i3 cars. Impressive visibility for launch day. I haven't driven an electric vehicle before so I think I'll use the free sign-up just to get behind the wheel of one.

<comment><USER4> I think you'll like the i3.

<comment><USER11> I've heard a lot of good things about it, including in this somehow fascinating talk about a _complete_ teardown:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDr4L6BzpP8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDr4L6BzpP8)

tl;dr A guy who sells $500k reports of cars for competing manufacturers says the i3 is revolutionary (in materials and construction).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really miss DriveNow in SF and the South Bay. It was really convenient if I missed my shuttle in the mornings, or if I had to come back to the city on the weekends. One more reason to ditch SF and move to Seattle I suppose.

<comment><USER13> No don't move to Seattle it rains a lot and there's no sun for 9 months.

Also, volcanoes.

<comment><USER14> You'll get used to the rain. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are rare. If you want to keep people away, tell 'am about the astonishingly shitty drivers, because after sixteen years they continue to annoy me on a daily basis.

<comment><USER15> What's wrong with the drivers? I find they drive slowly sometimes but it's not really a big deal. I find driving in SF to actually be scary on the other hand with people forcefully merging into your lanes.

I've been here for almost two years but I'm still not used to the lack of sunshine for most of the year.

<comment><USER16> You mean you haven't noticed the "you go first" wave battles that can last minutes on end? And the fact that, no matter how many lanes an Interstate has, they'll all be going exactly 59mph, making passing or trying to make your exit near-impossible?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I really love using Car2Go in Brooklyn. I transit/Bike/Walk 95% of the time, but it's great to have a one-way option when I take a trip that doesn't line up well transit lines.

<comment><USER18> interesting fact about car2go: car2go is no longer active in Ulm(Germany) which was the first pilot project

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is interesting to me because it may be a solution to "almost there" autonomous vehicle services in the next few years. Rather than getting picked up and dropped off at exactly your desired locations, users could pick up a car at a designated parking lot, drive the car the last mile to their destination and then the car would drive itself back to the nearest lot.

The fleet management aspect of it is less interesting since I've seen quite a few companies operating in this space already.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is actually BMW's second foray into ride sharing stateside. They ran their Drive Now service in San Francisco for a couple of years. It never took off, because there were too few places to pick up and drop off cars, and their all-electric fleet never solved the fleet management aspect, eg charging, etc. Their mobile app also was clunky at best. Coincidentally Drive Now works fantastically well, eg in Berlin, where you can find a car on pretty much every city block. You drive it where you want to go and can drop it off at any public meter. You only pay the distance traveled, in the neighborhood of 0.40€/km. Typical inner city rides work out to a few bucks. It's cheaper and faster than cabs or Uber. It didn't take off in San Francisco, I would speculate comma because they never cut a deal with the city to let them use any parking meter as drop off point.

</comment><comment><USER21> That looks very similar to DriveNow[1] that is used here in Berlin Germany quite a lot. I am surprised, that BMW is making its own now as DriveNow is a Cooperation of BMW and Sixt (A rental company).

Their service works really, really well I have to say. Almost every time there is a car parked close by, you rent them by the minute and park them anywhere. It is also much cheaper than Uber a cab or god forbid your own car.

[1]: [http://drive-now.com](http://drive-now.com)

</comment><comment><USER22> The one-way dropoff feature is what would be the main incentive for me to try out this service over something like getaround. Too bad it's only in Seattle and not in SF =).

</comment><comment><USER23> Looking forward to trying it but the app crashed hard, twice (got the iOS "charge your phone" screen when I tried to turn it off despite being at half battery), then just told me I needed to contact support. Will try again though, really want to try out the i3.

Any plans to add premium models like the M series?

<comment><USER4> Hi joshcanhelp. Sorry to hear that. ReachNow ordinarily handles customer support but if you email me the account you signed up with at firstname.lastname@example.com we'll have the iOS team check it out.

The 3 series cars are in the fleet right now. Can't comment on a specific model but there'll be more coming :)

<comment><USER24> It took a team to make that iOS application? You might be taken for a ride there. I saw the app on iTunes.

<comment><USER4> One very hard working engineer made the iOS app but we do have an iOS team so that person can take some well deserved time off.

As an engineer myself, consider that you may be underestimating the complexity of working with hardware in the car, something most apps don't have to worry about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Just signed up. I really wish this extended to the east side, I would use it for my daily commute.

</comment><comment><USER26> $24/hour to drive and $18/hour to park, and that's promotional pricing. Though it does cap at $110/day, so if you use it for five hours you might as well have fun with it until the next day.

<comment><USER27> That seems insanely high... How does it stack up to Car2Go?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is there any way to register as a non-american? I'm moving to Seattle in a couple weeks for an Internship and it would be great to be able to get this all setup before I head out.

<comment><USER4> There is! If you call the support number they'll walk you through it. There is also a retail location in Belltown where you can walk in and register.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Actually saw one of their BMW i3s driving on Bellevue yesterday. Was impressed at how quickly it accelerated. Doubt the battery life lasted long driving like that though.

<comment><USER14> 100% torque at zero RPM means even a Leaf is zippy from 0-20mph. After that it transforms back to an underpowered compact car. I3 had more horsepower and torque, so I imagine that it's even more fun. Spirited driving does take its toll on range, though.

<comment><USER16> I ran an i3 up to low 80s and it felt pretty quick the whole time. Even though I'm a BMW owner, I questioned why anyone would buy a premium electric car, because I pictured them as being economy first, everything else second.

Having driven and really enjoyed the i3, I realized -- why does a premium car make less sense in the electric segment as in the gas segment? Either way, they're unnecessary, but it doesn't matter there aren't tangible advantages over their econobox counterparts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I really would love to da an AMA about it. But I guess I'm not allowed. I'll check with marketing some time after the launch party ;)

<comment><USER4> Hey there - is this Matthew? I do not believe an AMA is against HN rules, send me an email so I can help! - <USER3>

<comment><USER30> Hey Aarjav, nope it's Andy. We should check with Matthew if we can do an AMA on reddit some time :)</comment></comment></comment>


Mega-Apple update day brings upgrades to OS X, iOS, WatchOS, and tvOS - chris-at http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/12/mega-apple-update-day-brings-ugprades-to-os-x-ios-watchos-and-tvos/ <comment><AUTHOR> They really gotta start staggering these updates. I don't know anybody who fancies spending half their day getting everything in order.</comment>


Garduino Rotary Phone: Saving my garden using Twilio, Arduino and Sinatra - <AUTHOR> https://www.twilio.com/blog/2014/06/garduino-phone-using-twilio-arduino-and-sinatra.html

<comment><USER2> Temperature sensing and microphones are literally dirt cheap. Moisture sensing is a bit harder. Are there any off the shelf solutions that recharge using solar, sense temperature, and can attach themselves to your WiFi? Even better: Any that use Cellular networking?

<comment><USER3> There are not, though I am building such a thing.

RF-equipped sensors (315 or 433 Mhz) transmitting to a GPRS or WiFi enabled hub would be best.

A fairly affordable foundation for that in Arduino-land would be the Fio or the LilyPad USB -- both of which have the LiPo charger.

<comment><USER2> _There are not, though I am building such a thing._

Are you in Texas?

<comment><USER3> SoCal.

The professional/industrial environmental sensor market sucks.

Pretty much any sensor offering high precision is sold exclusively through authorized resellers that in turn hold the logged data captive and liberate it manually through what amount to expensive professional services contracts.

I'd like to smash that.

<comment><USER2> So how about low-power units in something like a NEMA23 form factor with some liPo batteries and a solar cell, with some rare earth magnets on the back? Put a cellular modem with GPS in it, and sell it through a website, where you can assign units to "flocks" or "clouds" and look at their data on a Google Earth style interface. So long as the bandwidth use is kept low enough, this can be done economically and within a power budget that would let these things run indefinitely.

Just having thermometers and microphones would enable a ton of uses. Like, how about in the energy industry, where FFT analysis of machinery sounds could be used for basic health monitors? You could sell a ton of those to the Energy Industry and they wouldn't bat an eye at $100 a unit. Just the ability to tell people to distribute them, then handle everything else from a website would be worth way more than $100 a unit for them. (The employment qualification bar for the more remote energy industry jobs is _very_ low.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Doesn't seem like the rotary phone case will protect it very much from the environment (water around it carefully, I suppose, but what if you get a downpour?) Not sure what you can do if the temperature is the problem you're notified about, either...</comment>


The Windows Driver Frameworks are on GitHub - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windows_hardware_and_driver_developer_blog/archive/2015/03/18/windows-driver-frameworks-source-on-github.aspx <comment><USER2> There are actually some strong OS voices in Microsoft. I was at Solutions Linux in France (around 2006 iirc) and there was a Microsoft booth. Since our booth had some downtime I talked to the guy manning their booth who was kind of stranded between Linux distros and FLOSS companies.

He was pretty cool and genuinely trying to advance OS within Microsoft but said it's a pretty frustrating experience overall (his descriptions of the internal processes at Microsoft were pretty interesting). Seems like they have come a long way since, I hope he's still working there. I should have his card somewhere at home :)

So as far as I know there have been developers who were pushing to open source a lot of infrastructure/language stuff for quite some time.

Edit: I think it's no coincidence we see this happening now that Ballmer is gone. He was kind of the villain in the "let's open source stuff" stories I heard.

<comment><USER3> Scott Hanselman has been talking about the process of changing Microsoft's culture toward open source on Hanselminutes since he started working there about five years (and a couple of hundred episodes) ago.

The move to open source has been in the works a long time and appears (to me at least) as part of Ballmer and Gates long term strategic plan for the era when they were no longer the largest and second largest shareholders and the company was more beholden to Wall Street.

The new post-founder (ok Ballmer wasn't technically a founder) era at Microsoft has been set up so that Microsoft can operate like a software company again. That means embracing current industry culture. Practices that made sense when software came in boxes and was sold through magazines and connecting meant squawking over POTS, needed to be looked at with an eye toward long term.

Nadella was set up by Ballmer to fall into the pit of success. The super tanker's rudder was changed years ago. The move toward open source is no more overnight than the hardware build quality of the surface.

<comment><USER4> Also, I bet having Phil Haack working at Github changed the mindset of a lot of people, either way, even from the days from Novel and Mono, Microsoft was always cool with opensource.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I must say, I'm very impressed with all of the open source moves that MS has done lately. I wonder if that will drive more adoption of C# and cause Oracle to open up Java. I'm not a fan of C# because it's basically only used on windows systems, despite xamarin and et al.

<comment><USER6> I like both eco-systems a lot, however Java is currently more open than .NET, specially if you look around for available certified JVMs.

<comment><USER7> In this particular case, i'd prefer Windows above Oracle (Java) anytime, considering they deliver malware with their Java Setup...

Edit: Some people give a link to an alterantive download without malware... You know 99% of all Java downloads don't know that, do you?

<comment><USER6> There isn't any malware when downloading from

[http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/inde...](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html)

Or when packaging the Java application with the runtime

[http://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/technotes/tools/windows...](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/technotes/tools/windows/javapackager.html)

Or using one of the commercial JVMs that compile Java to native code

Or just bothering to read the dialog when installing it from Java.com.

While it is true the bundling shouldn't exist in the first place, any knowledgeable Java developer knows how to get applications deployed without it being an issue.

Actually my biggest problem with Java is Google dragging its feets and making the Android fragmentation a return of the J2ME headaches. Sun and Oracle were right all along.

<comment><USER3> My son gets the Ask crapware whenever he updates Java to play MineCraft on his computer. He's a child, not a Java Developer. He just wants to play MineCraft and Java is in his way and the Crapware loads by opt out.

<comment><USER6> You might see it differently, but I never let kids update software on their own.

<comment><USER7> If you are always holding their hands, they are going to be unknowing when they grow up.

Let them see for themselves why they shouldn't install the Java runtime and explain to them why it's bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What effect will this have on the ability to boost driver support in Linux, if any? FreeBSD has ndisgen [1], but would this help improve that or a broader set of driver use in Linux?

Secondly, what about WINE?

[1]: [https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ndisgen](https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ndisgen)

<comment><USER9> It means nothing. WDF is a high-level framework for drivers on top of Windows NT – basically a convenience library you link with. While using WDF, you can freely call regular NT functions too.

It's like MFC to Win32.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the information. I'm not at all involved in driver work so I have no clue. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is slightly off topic. However maybe someone on this thread can point me in the right direction. Can anyone recommend some good resources to get started writing low-level drivers for windows (books or open source examples)? I work mostly with embedded software on custom project. From time to time I need to interface with Windows machines and the information of this topic has always been limited.

<comment><USER11> I too have been finding it hard to find a single reliable and up-to-date source for learning windows drivers. There's a plethora of info online, but lots is out of date and/or scattered and redundant. Even decent paid training is hard to find, at least in my part of the world.

There's a book, but it's old [1]

There's samples, which are fresh [2]

There's a multi part series on Code Project, but it's old (yet much of it still applies conceptually; samples not so much) Part 1 of 6: [3]

If anybody has a good one-stop-shop and updated source of learning I'd very much appreciate it (I'd love a nicely written book on the matter that's not older than, say, 3 years old)

[1]: [http://www.amazon.com/Developing-Drivers-Foundation- Develope...](http://www.amazon.com/Developing-Drivers-Foundation-Developer- Reference/dp/0735623740) [2]: [https://github.com/Microsoft/Windows-driver- samples](https://github.com/Microsoft/Windows-driver-samples) [3]: [http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/9504/Driver- Development-...](http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/9504/Driver-Development- Part-Introduction-to-Drivers)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> One barrier to developing drivers for Windows is the driver signing policy [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/hardware/ff...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/hardware/ff548231\(v=vs.85\).aspx) which requires you to pay for a software publisher certificate.

<comment><USER13> I can live with this. Buggy software drivers wreak havoc and security vulnerabilities. I routinely use expensive industrial equipment without signed drivers, and the problem seems to be a warning from the installer.

<comment><USER14> This seems to be the case indeed. The couple of times Windows BSOD'd on me was always because of faulty drivers and more often than not the unsigned ones.

<comment><USER15> IIRC the only BSOD I got on XP on my thinkpad since 2006 was caused by not even driver bug, but by driver that seems to have intentionally caused BSOD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The open-sourcing is a sign that MSFT is in a tricky spot (BYOD, mobile, tablet, games) and desperately needs to improve relations with the outside world. Expect we'll also see MSFT using more open source in products to compete effectively though I wonder what'd happen with internal best practices that the outside world doesn't have, e.g. SAL. Will they contribute back? Let's see.

Inside MSFT there used to be minimal credit for releasing source which was a strong inhibitor in the employee review process. And a gratuitously awkward internal process for open sourcing code with no path for accepting changes/contributions. Attitudes are definitely improving.

The major benefit of this particular move will be when you're working on Windows drivers - now you can see and completely grok what a piece of code does until it transitions into the kernel proper.

<comment><USER17> It's also a sign that Microsoft sees its future in services.

Which in that case means that protecting the former "company jewels" of Windows and Office ceases to be less important.

<comment><USER18> I don't think it's about Windows and Office becoming less important as concepts or products, but that their old sales channel and use cases are outmoded. Windows and Office will still be Microsoft's cash cows; they'll just collect the fees through Azure, OneDrive, and other software-as-a-service packages. Open-sourcing is about keeping Microsoft's platforms competitive so that people will rent Azure nodes.

Microsoft realized they were becoming to FOSS as OS X is to Windows and is trying to counteract that. Microsoft's vision is still valid; they want Microsoft technology running every computer in the world.

<comment><USER19> Indeed it's clear that Office is very important, they are just unifying products and services. Now you have a unified subscription of $ 9.99 per month for Office 365 + Office Desktop Apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "we understand there's no substitute for having OS source available" Ho ho ho.

</comment><comment><USER21> Will it help making drivers for filesystems which MS doesn't care to support?

<comment><USER22> Probably not. The filesystem API Microsoft uses, Installable File System, has been in place and used by a bunch of people since the OS/2 days. Support for filesystems like zfs is lacking more due to apathy than anything else.

<comment><USER23> The IFS kit was a separate purchase from the DDK, even. There's a pieced- together header floating around on the web (as well as some OSS drivers for things like ext2)...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't see a patent grant...

</comment><comment><USER25> Whiny ass comments so far. Bravo Microsoft!

</comment><comment><USER26> "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." -Gandhi

<comment><USER27> why this quote got down voted? it's exactly how Opensource progresses.

<comment><USER28> 1.Because MSFT doing good job 2\. Gandhi was sick person, you can search about it , He was afraid of money/tea and so many things.Those good thing we hear about Gandhi I think most of them are propaganda.

<comment><USER26> 1\. Sure, Microsoft is doing the right thing after exhausting every other possibility. Closed source didn't work, FUD against open source didn't work ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt#Mic...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt#Microsoft)), now they need to stop people from leaving their platform and tools in any way possible.

2\. Ad hominem. The behavior of an individual doesn't change the truth of what they say.

<comment><USER27> the behaviour of an individual does affect his creditability though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I hope Microsoft knows this, but Open Source doesn't imply putting your source on GitHub (and vise-versa). If Microsoft dev teams served source tarballs along with their releases, we'd be just as happy. But perhaps they will actually use the GitHub issue trackers and other neat features, as they are pretty useful.

<comment><USER30> Uh, publishing your source under a usable license is sorta really the definition of open source. Whether or not you like their dev style or other things is separate and trying to make new definitions. You shouldn't just throw caps on a common description then claim no one is that common thing because you've redefined it.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Khumbu – image search engine as service - <AUTHOR> https://khumbu.im <comment><AUTHOR> comments from founder:

Current status - <USER2>

I have been working on this project during last 12 month and now want to show it to community and ask for some feedback.

Demo search: [https://app.khumbu.im/search/5dff72e66483e25b40e0222e](https://app.khumbu.im/search/5dff72e66483e25b40e0222e)

So what is this?

1\. Khumbu is an image search engine based on computer vision and deep learning.

2\. Workflow: upload your images via API or web app and run search queries via API/app.

3\. Right now it provides object detection, classification, exif extraction, face detection, nsfw scoring.

4\. Tech details: images are processed using celery workers, after that all information is moved to ElasticSearch to serve user queries. Most part is deployed in k8s cluster, but some processing is done on remote machines with GPUs.

Soon we want to add: 1\. face recognition (public and user specific faces)

2\. similarity search (based on embeddings)

3\. search images of specific place

4\. better query processing (synonyms/related terms etc).

NOTE: Sorry, but right now indexing is disabled due to high cost of GPUs.</comment>


Something people want: Read blog from beginning - <AUTHOR> http://bobvis.blogspot.com/2007/12/bleg-simple-technology-request.html <comment><AUTHOR> I want this too.</comment>


Uncanny Valley - <AUTHOR> https://nplusonemag.com/issue-25/on-the-fringe/uncanny-valley/ <comment><USER2> I think what I like best about this piece is the way in which it emphasizes the cultural homogeneity of Silicon Valley and the tension that enjoying and benefiting from that culture creates. It's absurd that each of these companies present itself as radical, creative, and free-thinking, when it's just another start-up with standing desks and Nerf guns lying around. Even the snack selection is stereotypical "the requisite wholesale box of assorted Clif Bars."

At the same time, the more relaxed, casual, and less hierarchical corporate structures that these companies have adopted can be very rewarding. While they haven't yet nailed the work-life balance considerations for many employees, more comfortable environments may end up fostering more productive, more inclusive teams (albeit there's a long way to go w/r/t diversity in tech) [1].

Just a plug: I've been a subscriber to n+1 for a long time, and I was pleasantly surprised to see it on the front page of Hacker News. It's a fantastic publication.

1\. [http://nyti.ms/1oCxUeF](http://nyti.ms/1oCxUeF)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been out of SF for three years but goddamn if I didn't get swept right back into it while reading this. Fantastic writing, made me inhabit that same mental space that I'd almost forgotten about. I miss it but I never want to go back. The line about working at a startup feeling like an abusive relationship hit home pretty hard.

<comment><USER4> At one startup I was in, I said to a coworker, "It's like we're all the kids, and daddy drinks" and she had a fit of uncontrollable laughter.

<comment><USER5> I actually just had a small laughter right now by reading it. That's how good it is.

Still smiling after a good minute. Thanks for sharing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Really well-written piece. Someone else mentioned Brett Easton-Ellis in this thread, and I totally got that vibe from the early paragraphs on.

What really got me though, was thinking about my earliest days building small Beavis and Butthead fan sites on Geocities, browsing Netscape for hours and waiting five minutes for a certain page to finally load. I was only 12 then, but everything just felt so new and shiny, and as someone else said like it could and would change the world.

Having now lived around and worked in tech for a while, stories like these make me feel a bit like I have been punched in the gut. It just seems negative and gross, but in a really captivating way. I connect with what the writer is saying, but also still get butterflies in my stomach when I think back to the 90's and my earliest exposure to startups and internet use.

At any rate, just me rambling. Well-done and insightful, I would read an entire novel like this.

<comment><USER3> Now picture someone not quite as old as you, who missed that first wave of internet excitement. They've never had that excitement, and they're the ones graduating college and going west now. I went out straight after high school, moved from the East Coast, did my tour of duty. It's weird because at that age I had no idea what kind of life I might want to live; what kind of lives were even available to live, really. And I didn't have the same dreams you may have had, definitely not the same inspirations.

All the aspects of the OP's writing that hit me like a gut punch now were absolutely bog standard to me. Only once I'd left (largely due to depression and burnout) did I realize how far that life is from the life I want to live.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Google cache: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4ToCZE...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4ToCZEnixcQJ:https://nplusonemag.com/issue-25/on- the-fringe/uncanny-valley/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

<comment><USER8> Does anyone know why this article was unreachable yesterday? Was it "just" an outage of the entire n+1 magazine?

<comment><USER7> I got an "error connecting to the database" type of message. I think the entire site was having trouble with the HN traffic spike.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Love it. Every time I try to talk about these things with those who participate in these sorts of mentalities, I'm shrugged off as cynical, or non-appreciative of a perception of positive progress. It's very difficult as someone who's naturally not "in it", to explain why it's so difficult and soul crushing.

<comment><USER10> Oh, yeah. Clearly you just don't "get it". Clearly you're just don't "want it enough". I say, if you're so smart, articulate what "it" actually is, clearly, without resorting to hand-waiving, or else I will default back to assuming there is no actual "it" there.

<comment><USER9> I have a different personality with different sets of motivations, compounded with mental health differences that make it near impossible to fit in with the SV crowd. It's one of the few crowds like this, despite their swaths of feel- good attitudes and intentions. It's incredibly exclusionary and dismissive. Funny enough, your comment is a great example of what I mean.

I'm assuming you didn't read the article, or else you would have had a better understanding of what I refer to when talking about "it".

<comment><USER10> I was agreeing with you. I'm sorry, that was my fault. I misused the general "you".

<comment><USER9> Gotcha. No worries, sorry for blowing up like that.. :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The article form of "Silicon Valley" HBO...

I actually turned off the TV and finished the entire article. Its amazing to think how rare it is for me to actually read an article and not just SKIM. Maybe its not that amazing. Most articles just aren't worth more than a skim. This was so enjoyable I was disappointed that it was over. I'd read a book like this...

Favorite line:

> The hashtag unleashes a stream of photographs featuring people I've never > met — beautiful people, the kind of people who look good in athleisure.

</comment><comment><USER12> The workplaces she describe seems like they try to replace an ordinary life with a life at work. Like some sort of continuation of university. She writes it herself:

> "Job listings are an excellent place to get sprayed with HR's idea of fun > and a 23-year-old's idea of work-life balance."

I have had a taste of that, and oh my god I would never go back. The life that scared the shit out of 23-year-old me is way better than any company could ever offer. I work to live, and I would never go back to this "work as life" living ever again.

</comment><comment><USER4> Last night I read the entire article, out loud, to my SO.

At first, she said wasn't sympathetic because for her, it was "first world problems", and a millenial's predictable disappointment in the workplace. She's not wrong.

But I read it as a kind of drug memoir. An addict talking about their days breathing in all the toxic and intoxicating fumes of the city. And like every former addict it's impossible not to have a kind of nostalgia for it. Life is simpler, because your whole life is about the next fix.

<comment><USER13> Man, those workplace disappointments sure aren't "predictable" except in a larger workplace ecosystem that's 100% fucked up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great writing. Reads like a memoir, but with the depth of an ethnography. I believe the company described here is Mixpanel FWIW.

<comment> enahs-sf Rip sticks and dftc. Dead giveaway.

<comment><USER8> I had to look DFTC up. From their job descriptions:

> • _We are down for the cause ("DFTC"). We're all here to make Mixpanel a > success. There is no job too big or too small for us. "That's not my job" is > not in our vocabulary._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's interesting to me that my friends and I who grew up in SV and lived through the .com boom as adolescents and had parents who worked during the .com and PC/networking/semiconductor booms are largely skeptical and at times even dismissive of the latest incarnation of SV culture.

Perhaps it's hubris ("the old version --my version-- was better"), perhaps it's cynicism (seeing family/friends be burned in the last booms), or perhaps it's a feeling of betrayal ("I grew up wanting to be part of a culture that has morphed -- in my opinion for the worse").

Maybe it's something else. Though my sample size is small, I find this contrast interesting.

Perhaps it's just a numbers thing where newcomers predominantly buy into the current myth and want to live the current version of startup life, whereas the old timers have not self selected in that manner and this represent a wider spectrum.

<comment><USER16> I graduated from high school in 1996 and was way into web development from the very first days. I didn't end up coming out for the dotcom days, but I definitely have fond memories of those times. There was a sense of camaraderie of early PC and internet users where the motivations seemed to me to be slightly more noble. Not that the VCs or tech giants of the time weren't greedy—of course they were—but there wasn't the same kind of Hollywood feel where all the ambitious people were flooding out here gold-rush style.

If you went on Usenet / IRC back in the 80s/90s, there was this palpable sense that the internet would change the world. You could almost draw a direct line back to the counter-culture movement of the 60s, and those ideas which led to a lot of early software and networking work which we still benefit from today. The vast majority of people involved with computers back then were just drawn to them by their nature.

The problem today is that other sectors of the economy are really suffering, and software has become so easy that the bar to get started is so low, add the veneer of social media glorifying the whole thing and it lends itself to a circus atmosphere. Many people today choose tech as an arbitrary career path. I don't begrudge anyone their chosen path, but it has certainly led to a different vibe than what it used to be.

At the end of the day though, I have to admit to myself that it is probably simple nostalgia. Every generation thinks the old days were better as they age.

<comment><USER15> > Many people today choose tech as an arbitrary career path.

Very true. At even the most elite of schools, CS degree -> engineering career has joined Econ degree -> banking and High GPA -> Consulting as a top choice high flying career choice for bright students who aren't sure of what they want to do for their careers.

I started college in 2003, when as college applicants we were going through the deepest troughs of the dotcom crash. The number of entering CS students was about 20. The dean called them "the true believers" (I was studying EE). I believe that this number is now well north of 100.

>Every generation thinks the old days were better as they age.

I am constantly questioning my own opinion of this latest trend, as I'm keenly aware of my own such biases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> That really hits home. It is difficult to explain to the uninitiated the degree to which one's identity becomes wrapped up in the startup.

It sometimes feels like it has its own mind and soul.

<comment><USER8> It's also difficult to explain the corollary: When work is life, your boss telling you that maybe it wasn't a good "culture fit" anymore / after all is a little like dying. That's melodramatic, but losing such a big part of your identity is disorienting and depressing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Fantastic writing. Reminds me a bit of "Microserfs", but somewhat more focused.

<comment><USER19> Ah - I made that association this morning when I read it over breakfast then thought I was being crazy.

No references to flat food though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is it because we were the nerds in high school? Is it because we were the kids who had to explain differential equations to our classmates more than once?

Is that why we now feel this incessant need to fabricate startups/tech as being "cool"? Is that why we write grandiose tales of how "difficult" life is, moving from CRUD app to CRUD app?

Sorry, author. I feel your pain, believe me I do. To me, this article honestly came across as someone who had read too much Bret Easton Ellis recently...

<comment><USER21> >this article honestly came across as someone who had read too much Bret Easton Ellis recently...

I very much enjoyed this article, but I had that BEE thought as well! My theory is that a lot of us human beings manufacture strife and struggle, because that is the Hero's Journey that everyone wants to be able to tell to their grandchildren. In the absence of "real" conflict (war, poverty, abuse), we shine the dark light on things like this. "I have a well paying job with great benefits and live in an awesome city...but I'm sad because, like, what does this all mean, man?" I'm not discounting the deep sadness that existential crises can saddle your daily life with, but I've seen this trend time and time again. Just pay attention to modern rap music, like Kanye. Listen to his lyrics. That dude has minimal "real world" problems in his life right now, from what I can tell, yet his music is one of "me against the world." That's because he knows what a story arc is supposed to be like, so he'll play that out for us, regardless of its actual truth.

/random rant

<comment><USER22> Joseph Campbell's idea of the hero's journey was, I think, partly inspired by the myth of the Buddha, whose problem was (excuse me) the same as Kanye's: he had everything, yet he was unhappy.

<comment><USER21> Correct. However it's at this point of the story (both of their stories) that the roads drastically separate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Great writing. It definitely hits on some truth and calls out hypocrisies and absurdities that deserve to be called out.

Overall, though, I think this is unnecessarily negative.

I think you've got to keep some perspective. There are about eight billion people in the world. 7.9 billion of them would probably give almost anything to enjoy the lifestyle she so eloquently disparages.

> I lean in and go to a panel on big data. There are two venture capitalists > onstage, dressed identically. They are exceptionally sweaty. [...] It's like > watching two ATMs in conversation.

> The food is served in sturdy tinfoil troughs, and people race to be first in > line for self-serve. [It's] well worth someone else's money, and every > afternoon I shovel it into my body

So you viscerally dislike VCs, but you're cool with VC-funded startup perks.

> My roommate works down on the Peninsula, for a website that everyone loathes > but no one can stop using.

So you also dislike Facebook, and you assume the other billion people using Facebook dislike it as well. You disapprove of your roommate's choice of job, you think they're wasting their time working on "a website that everyone loathes". Everything is terrible.

\--

Her writing reminds me of Glenn Greenwald and Noam Chomsky -- two other writers that I respect, but who share a bad habit of hating on anything connected to money, ambition, or technologically driven human progress.

<comment><USER24> Just because it's a lifestyle that many people would kill to have doesn't mean it's actually worthwhile. It just means it's well marketed. Like living and working in Hollywood, or being a banker in London.

If you drink the koolaid AND you get really lucky, you get to have a profitable business that changes the world for the better. For most, it's actually a job like anything else, just with the added expectation of utter devotion and unwavering belief.

I think her point is that despite the perks, she's just "shoveling it into her body", all of it, and can't quite get over the uncanniness of it all.

Also, I thought Facebook at first too, and thought it was a bit strong, then realized she was talking about LinkedIn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm not from the valley or the US and don't know the accuracy of those words, but it feels really real.

If anything, it's stunningly well written. Great post.

</comment><comment><USER26> > "Of course not," says the first, "but you don't buy to live there."

This quip about investing in property in Oakland hits home. I had some reservations about crossing the Bay a few years ago to buy a home, but one I did _not_ have was about moving to a place where people who had attitudes like this were uncommon.

Several months ago I ran into an ex-coworker who triumphantly told me how he had cashed out some of his options to buy some units in Oakland, evicted the existing tenants under some owner/family move-in loophole, vacated, remodeled, and was now raking in the rent. All the while explaining that he would never actually live there. I wanted to vomit.

I'm a lucky dummy romantic, I moved to SF because I like trains, and LA didn't have any. I have some skills which have helped me land excellent jobs. I don't hide my disgust for baloney very well and this has enabled me to walk away from some jobs. My brushes with the proto-corporate startup world have been fleeting, but proportionally every bit as soul-sucking as the author makes it out to be.

Excellent piece.

</comment><comment><USER27> "Oakland," one of them says. "That's where we want to invest."

"Too dangerous," says another. "My wife would never go for it."

"Of course not," says the first, "but you don't buy to live there."

I live in Oakland. So glad these people aren't coming here.

<comment><USER28> Even if they're not gonna be your neighbors, from the last quote it sounds like they'll be your landlords. Not sure if that's much better?

<comment><USER27> They already are my landlords... :(

Actually my landlords are pretty dope. They're techies (me too) but they live upstairs so they're ok by me. But yeah, the absentee landlord for profit thing kinda sucks. I get a bit of schadenfreude when chinese investors buy their appartment complex in the city and raise their rents.

<comment><USER8> Are you saying you saw absentee landlords themselves experience a rent hike at the hands of foreign investors? That would indeed be a nice bit of schadenfreude…

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Wow. That hooked me from the beginning to end. Thanks for posting this

</comment><comment><USER30> That was phenomenal. I constantly struggle with a lot of this - trying to distance myself from many aspects of the culture, without getting too cynical about it.

I think most of all, I just appreciate knowing that there is someone else kicking around in this city that feels the same way I do.

</comment><comment><USER31> We used to be adults when we left home for college or a job. Then, college became an extension of our youth... Now, that's not enough either. We need our jobs to be our next day care...

We're growing up slower. It's not a problem, so long as we're equipped as a society for longer maturation cycles, longer lifetimes, etc. The real world always finds its way in.

Better to accept the new paradigm, call it what it is, and adapt accordingly, than to judge.

Anna's story would make a great movie, btw.

</comment><comment><USER32> Great piece. Love her style. It hit home with me as well for several reasons.

</comment><comment><USER33> >"I feel sorry," he says, his breath moist against my neck. "Everyone's going to hit on her."

</comment><comment><USER34> So, what is this? A rambling of everything around you portrayed in a negative light; I'm sure it's a formula that could work in a about any other city or any other job. Heck, I was sure at the end of it she would tell us she joined a fight club and has an imaginary alter ego called Tyler.

If we discarded every item you mentioned for being juvenile or immature the office of your dreams would look like this: [http://www.nimlok-chicago.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/12/cub...](http://www.nimlok-chicago.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/12/cubicles.jpg) But that's not the office of your dreams right? To know the office of your dreams you would have to tell me _what you want_, not what you-do-not-want, which is missing in every paragraph of this piece.

</comment><comment><USER35> Since the site seems to be down, here's a Readability mirror I made using the Google cache version: [https://www.readability.com/articles/j04a6pwn](https://www.readability.com/articles/j04a6pwn)

</comment><comment><USER36> Reading this made me profoundly sad, in the best possible way

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm in love with this article, and my SO is reading it right now. It reminds me perfectly of books like J-Pod and MicroSerfs, as well as some of the recent Gibson novels.

I work at a company that has just morphed out of "startup" and into "contender". I didn't start early, I was hired by the guys who were hired by the founders (so that makes me a 'C' I guess by some old adage), and I've seen the company change so much even in my short time there.

But this article nails so many perfect details. The plastic tubs of goldfish and trailmix, the Mid Century modern-esque furniture.

Also, the bar referenced is probably OddJob.

</comment><comment><USER38> _A MEETING IS DROPPED MYSTERIOUSLY onto our calendars, and at the designated time we shuffle warily into a conference room. The last time this happened, we were given forms that asked us to rate various values on a scale of 1 to 5: our desire to lead a team; the importance of work-life balance. I gave both things a 4 and was told I didn't want it enough._

Clearly, the only acceptable answers to this question (if indeed one wants that team leader position) are the numbers 5 and 1.

And if you don't implicitly understand this, then this definitely isn't the right industry for you.

</comment><comment><USER39> Fantastic writing!

</comment><comment><USER10> That is, after all, the conceit of utopian stories: they are all dystopian.

</comment><comment><USER40> <Sarcasm> StartUps were the boys' loophole for not having to learn to deal with their fathers. (/fathers' companies, structures, power games) </Sarcasm>

</comment><comment><USER41> This is fucking amazing

</comment><comment><USER42> Are there any other articles in this same vein that people would recommend?

</comment><comment><USER43> Beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER44> Are modern teambuildings really that lame as she described them? Glad I didn't choose big corporate as career.

<comment><USER8> I had to laugh. I think I applied to be the roommate of the folks behind the teambuilding exercise company she mentioned. [http://ClashSF.com](http://ClashSF.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Morozov would say, "I told you so".</comment>


Cromemco Computer Corporation - tech-historian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromemco <comment><AUTHOR> Harry Garland and Cromemco were influencers and innovators in the new personal computer world. They quickly gathered a reputation for solid reliable engineering.</comment>


The World Economic Forum predicts a USD 400 trillion pensions shortfall by 2050 - <AUTHOR> https://www.weforum.org/press/2017/05/global-pension-timebomb-funding-gap-set-to-dwarf-world-gdp/ <comment><USER2> People will have to pay a little more, a little longer, and take out a little less in some combination. I am sure the actuaries are smart enough to figure it out.

<comment><USER3> No. That is a dangerous attitude on this. There are limits to how much you can raise through taxes before you trigger a death spiral, where you scare off working age contributors, which increases the burden the rest have to pay, which scares off more contributors, and so on.

That's exactly what happened with the dinosaur companies (GM, Bethlehem, etc) with unfunded pension obligations. The "legacy costs" made it so they couldn't compete. True, it's harder to switch countries than avoid employment at a dinosaur, but that's a difference of degree, not kind; the dynamics are all the same.

Don't start from a model that assumes no one will ever leave. That's how earlier generations of actuaries "didn't figure it out".

Edit: It's not even necessary that workers flee the country; it could also be that more of the economy is driven underground, which has its own nasty side effects.

<comment><USER2> Pension funds are usually funded by the contributions of the qualifying members in their tier, much less by taxes receipts in state funds in some kind of general debt obligation. You may also be confounding private and public pension funds, the latter of which I am guessing makes up the lion's share of what the article is talking about. Of what I know of actuarial work (not much, admittedly,) outlooks are calculated on the combination of many risk dimensions. Changes to pay outs and qualifications are made decades in advance to attenuate the effect.

But to address your concern head on - yes, the fund can go broke, and it's not the rest of the public's problem. That's the kind of loss that creates healthy risk aversion and should make for sensible negotiation by labor leaders and the politicians they put into office in order to limit corruption.

<comment><USER3> >Pension funds are usually funded by the contributions of the qualifying members in their tier, much less by taxes receipts in state funds in some kind of general debt obligation. You may also be confounding private and public pension funds, the latter of which I am guessing makes up the lion's share of what the article is talking about.

I'm not confounding anything; it's the same the problem in both cases: your organization accrued a liability with no asset to pay it, so you had to take the payments from newcomers to this system. Whether that happens within a private or a public pension fund doesn't change the dynamics of the core problem, which is that your organization is at a cost disadvantage to competing organizations, which then spirals out.

The example I gave was the dinosaur companies. Bethlehem offers $15/hour but must take out $1/hour to pay for unfunded pension obligations. NewSteelCorp offers $15/hour but needn't take out _anything_ for legacy pension obligations. Where do the best workers go? And what does that to do the burden on remaining workers?

Likewise, every time you raise SS taxes to cover increased obligations, you're risking the flight of contributors to other countries and the underground economy.

I don't know what you think I'm "confounding" there; I see a recognition of a common pattern that I tried to explicate, with implications for the current problem. "Oh, this is public, not private" is non-responsive.

>Of what I know of actuarial work (not much, admittedly,) outlooks are calculated on the combination of many risk dimensions.

And my point was that the actuaries missed a big dimension, which is that the organization has actual competition. So when you say "oh, we'll just take one more dollar an hour from workers to shore it up, what's the problem?" you're failing to model the loss of contributing workers to companies that don't have to thusly gore them.

You're right that pension funds _can_ retroactively change pension formulas, but they typically don't, and Social Security definitely hasn't cut pensions to something sustainable.

>But to address your concern head on - yes, the fund can go broke, and it's not the rest of the public's problem. That's the kind of loss that creates healthy risk aversion and should make for sensible negotiation by labor leaders and the politicians they put into office in order to limit corruption.

So you agree a pension fund can go broke, but are simply claiming that governments are immune to an analogous problem? I'd say it becomes the public's problem at that point, when there are millions of seniors that expected payments they can't get without raiding other critical government services. Why don't you?

<comment><USER2> I'm not trying to be combative, but there are significant differences between public and private pensions that I don't think you're accounting for which stem from the legal mandates in the charter for how the public pension assets can be invested and the monopsony on the employment of public servants (e.g., there is no "competing" state trooper battalion operating at a better labor cost advantage). Pension funds do _not_ necessarily impose an obligation on the operating budget of a municipality. That's what it means to say it can go broke. If it were the public's problem, it would be solvent. It's not like muni bonds. I'm with you on your description of the pitfalls in the private sector.

<comment><USER3> >I'm not trying to be combative, but there are significant differences between public and private pensions that I don't think you're accounting for which stem from the legal

Then you agree that you need to address the parallel's I've drawn if you want to maintain that position?

> (e.g., there is no "competing" state trooper battalion operating at a better > labor cost advantage).

Are you reading my comments? In both replies, I already explained how there are relevant ways in public pension funds experience this problem: workers can be scared into other countries, other jurisdictions, other jobs, and the underground economy, with the exact same effect on ability to meet obligations. If you believe this can't happen, you need to flesh it out a bit more.

"It's not like there's another company they can work for lol" is how GM etc got into this mess.

> Pension funds do not necessarily impose an obligation on the operating > budget of a municipality. That's what it means to say it can go broke

I don't know any non-trivial sense in which "a massive class of people expected pension payments that will be cut off" doesn't count as the public's problem.

To everyone in the world looking at the this, the problem is that a) lots of people are expecting to receive pension money and b) lots government services need to be provided, and we can't afford to do both.

You're saying it's "not a problem" simply because "you can just reneg on a) while paying b)"? That's a non-standard conception of "not a problem".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> On a related note, Illinois debt was just downgraded partially because of their pension debt.

</comment><comment><USER5> Paging WI Governor Scott Walker.

[http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2015/aug/14/s...](http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2015/aug/14/scott- walker/wisconsin-only-state-fully-funded-pension-system-s/)

<comment><USER6> Most discussions about "fully funded" safety nets go something like this. It's the reason, so far as I can tell, why Republicans talk about social security being trillions in the hole while others point out that the money in the fund is more than sufficient. The same principle is responsible (along with other things) for suburban growth in America.

The reason is that republicans are referring to accrual accounting, while others are looking at the balance sheet. It's very uncommon to do accrual accounting in government, though I've heard rumors that military pensions are funded in this way. My understanding is that, outside the government, it is obligatory (de facto or legally, I don't know). The absence of accrual accounting is known as a Ponzi scheme in the private sector.

When you let governments reap the benefits now and pay later, they use unfunded pensions as compensation and build low-value roads to cheaply built houses built in corn fields. And for government pensions, it's impossible to sustain the required infinite growth in a finite world. In the short term, the tendency of developed nations toward low birth rates breaks the systems even before we reach space concerns.

<comment><USER7> The smugness practically drips from your pores. It's not government building those houses out in the cornfields, it is the monied developers who capture local governments and bribe them into letting them build those cracker boxes.

I live in an 80s suburb and while I can see that the newer ones are even worse, I prefer to avoid telling others how they should live their lives. For example, urban high rises are just human filing cabinets and it's just so Soviet to pack everyone into cities. I have lived in urban areas, rural areas, and where I am now, and I can tell you that where I am now is the most comfortable--it is reasonable density, I am not concerned about being mugged, and groceries and entertainment are close at hand. But yes, Americans have been screwed over by developers and shitty politicians, what else is new?

I don't get all the hyperventilating that some people do over low birth rates. You're right: Infinite growth is not going to happen, it's blatantly obvious. So what if low birth rates break their system? Their system sucks! Maybe that's what you were saying. The answer is certainly not importing the bulk of the third world into our communities, that's bullshit, too.

<comment><USER8> >So what if low birth rates break their system?

Birth rates fund our social security system. It keeps the "Ponzi" scheme going.

I think I'm having a hard time with it being called a Ponzi scheme. Had an individual invested the amount they put into SS into the market, it would not be a Ponzi scheme, and is essentially a 401K. Is SS is only a Ponzi scheme because of the way the government manages it?

If I take a step back and government takes money an invests it into the growth of the GDP, is it no longer a Ponzi scheme?

<comment><USER9> "Ponzi scheme" as a term is generally overused. It identifies a specific fraud, and things that look sorta vaguely like it may have any number of critical differences in those sorta-vague similarities that result in a completely different outcome, including potentially worse ones. It is not a sufficient analysis of the situation to stick the label "Ponzi scheme" on social security and think anyone has obtained any sort of understanding of the situation from it.

Resist metaphors.

<comment><USER8> I can see the similarities, at least with a pyramid scheme (which I think is synonymous). Current "investors" are paid by future "investors." Current investors being people collecting SS, future investors being people paying into the system. When it was first enacted, the "current" investors at the time hadn't put anything in (obviously).

I know that's a huge oversimplification. As GDP rises so does the tax revenue (assuming politicians stop cutting taxes) so I understand it's a little more nuanced than a simple scheme.

Also, when we had a SS surplus (in the 90s?), the politicians of course spent it all while increasing the debt. I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with the way it works financially, as long as the government manages it properly, which they aren't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't get something: if the point is to assure pensioners a pretty similar life quality to the one they have today, with shouldn't be that by 2050 it would be easy and cheap ?

How does that go into the calculations , if att all ?

<comment><USER11> Effectively your arguing that productivity growth will effectively bail us out of our high levels of debt and pension obligations (which are another form of debt) and there are more than a few that have argued the same.

The challenge is that productivity gains have been slowing. Computers and the internet are now fairly mature technologies and aren't driving the productivity gains we saw in the 80's and 90's. Also as people age the economy is shifting from goods and services that can be highly automated (entertainment) to those that cannot (nursing home care).

<comment><USER10> I free with the point you made, but: Productivity growth is maybe a too abstract concept and that creates confusion .

For example, some claim that the reason we don't see Productivity growth across the econmy is that because people(across all age groups) take the money saved from sectors with growing productivity(say, manufactured goods) and use that in sectors with stagnant productivity , say restaurants, plays ,spas , etc.

As for the shift towards nursing care - yes, it is true today, but one could imagine(and some are building) all kinds of technologies that reduce that need and it's expense.For example, if there was a really affordable and good: custom meal delivery, transportation , telehealth and medical adherence , fall prevention, some arrangement that prevents loneliness, and some better medical treatments and tools to age related diseases , and many of today's drugs will be off-patent[1] - it's possible that elderly treatment cost, at today's quality levels would go down significantly.

[1]Of course ,new treatments should be too available to seniors, and that raises the question of ever growing health care costs ,which is a big issue itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I get how an excess of pensioners (not enough workers) in an economy can be a problem.

I get how an excess of unemployed people (people without a job) can be a problem.

What I don't get is how both can be a problem at the same time.

<comment><USER13> Imagine a desert island with three inhabitants: W, P, & U.

W climbs trees every day to fetch coconuts and then swims them across the channel to a neighboring island where she barters them away for drinking water and then swims back with jugs full of water.

P used to help W with the tree climbing, but is now too old to do the work. However, he long ago made a deal with W, and she's a man of her word, so she keeps him supplied with enough fresh water to get by every day. Still, when the yield of coconuts becomes bad, or when there's a glut of coconuts on the neighboring island, she is liable to feel that there is an excess of pensioners on the island.

U is in desperate need of water and would do almost anything, but he doesn't know how to swim or climb trees.

Now, tell me: How does the existence of U help get the fresh water that P needs? How does the existence of P help U find a way to earn his water?

<comment><USER14> Well, P could take steps to help U learn to help W. e.g. giving them a bit of water, and training them to help W; instead of blaming U for the poor coconut yield. Which in turn would help W yield more coconuts, or be flexible to diversify how they get water to be robust against the coconut market. I get how you example illustrates how the amount of P's aren't dependant on the number of U's, but I think this example is too microscopic.

I think there's another factor to consider. W doesn't give water directly to P, there's G who takes a little bit of water from everyone. G has enough water for themselves, and instead of drinking just the water they need, or helping U to make their island economy better, they decide to bathe in the water. Then when P wants some water like G has promised and there's none left, they blame U. Which makes W and P angry at U.

The situation is more like G is taking a little bit of water from everyone, and there's yet another person on the island E. E is in charge of delegating coconut fetching tasks to W and up until recently P. G decided E should also be in charge of distributing water that comes from G to W and P.

E realizes that once P leaves, there will only be one coconut fetcher. So, worried that they won't be getting enough water to give to G, E gives less water to W instead of hiring and training U to help this coconut fetching business. This isn't good because eventually W will become a P, and E will have no one, and G will not be getting water from E. Everyone becomes a U because G decided to give water to E to delegate instead of directly to W, P, and U.

<comment><USER13> ?!

Why do you want to add so many additional people to my already overcrowded island?!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In the US, one initiative that should help tremendously is increasing the limit to all tax advantaged retirement contributions, and future periodic adjustments to inflation.

</comment><comment><USER16> How can a shortfall happen, technically? I mean, why not just print enough money to inflate it, to cut real values of pensions to make ends of the system meet? After all pensioners aren't likely to riot.

<comment><USER17> _After all pensioners aren 't likely to riot._

I would highly recommend reading The Road To Serfdom ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Serfdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Serfdom)). It details precisely why a right wing government needs to invest in welfare and social care for this exact reason; when a government fails the poor (or the poor's parents I imagine) they have a tendency to rise up and kill all the rich people.

<comment><USER18> > It details precisely why a right wing government needs to invest in welfare > and social care

I was gobsmacked when I read this, as most of the Hayekians I know argue to let the poor/weak fend for themselves, as it would be better to let the weak perish than to steal from the strong to protect them. I may actually have to read it now!

Also, I feel it's unreasonable for those without property to respect property rights if they gain no benefit from doing so (other than not being a victim of State violence).

<comment><USER17> Hayek was one of the first to suggest a Universal Basic Income would be a good idea. That would be quite a strange notion if he thought the poor should be left to fend for themselves (at least economically).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Netflix Ditches Silverlight for HTML5 in Safari on OS X Yosemite - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/06/03/netflix-ditches-silverlight-html5-macs-available-today-safari-os-x-yosemite-beta/ <comment><USER2> I was so happy when I first heard about this. Silverlight is always really really buggy for me.</comment>


List of 1,897 websites using Ruby on Rails' CookieStore for session management - <AUTHOR> http://maverickblogging.com/list-of-websites-using-ruby-on-rails-cookiestore-for-session-management/

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the questions asked in the previous thread ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6545923](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6545923)) is "Who is using CookieStore?"

Well, here is a partial list.</comment>