The Disappearing American Grad Student - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/education/edlife/american-graduate-student-stem.html <comment><USER2> The monetary value proposition of grad school simply isn't very good if you're a US citizen. There is non-monetary value (like advancing human knowledge) that makes grad school worth it for some, but the pay is low.

Imagine you just graduated from a quality undergrad with high grades and strong recommendations from your professors. Maybe you had an internship or two or spent a summer doing research. Maybe you even have authorship on a published paper as an undergrad. You could be a very strong grad school candidate. Or you could just get a corporate job right out of undergrad.

Lets look at the options.

Option 1: You go to grad school and spend ~6 years working extremely long hours at nearly minimum wage with no benefits.

Option 2: You start at ~100K USD/year with benefits working for Big Tech/Finance/Big Oil/Pharma/Defense/etc. In those ~6 years you likely work fewer hours than a grad student. You have the free time to meet someone and the income to start a family.

Most people will chose Option 2. The two main types of people who chose Option 1 are those who are passionate about learning and advancing human knowledge and those who want a career where a PhD is required.

If instead you're a citizen of "India, China, Korea, Turkey and other foreign countries" (quoted from the article) then the calculus is completely different. Not only do you get to advance human knowledge, but you get to live and work (as a TA or RA) in the US for ~6 years. After graduation you have a good chance of landing a well paying job for a US-based firm or becoming a professor or research scientist.

<comment><USER3> There's also option 1.5: You start at a grad school in a PhD program (so that you have support and do not pile up debt), and you leave with a Masters as quickly as you can.

I managed to get my MS in CS back in the early 90s in one calendar year. I had full support via a fellowship since I was one of the top students, so I did not have to be an RA or TA, and could take additional classes. I finished all but my MS Thesis requirement in 2 semesters and owed nothing thanks to the fellowship. I then decided I was leaving with an MS, and paid for my MS Thesis credits over the summer.

This cost me only a year, and it happened immediately after undergrad when I was really good at studying anyhow. I am far enough into my career to realize that it strengthened my resume early on, and I think it has really helped my long-term career earnings.

The funny thing is that I didn't intend to be so mercenary. My original intent was to get my requirements out the way early to leave more time for research the second year. I realized part-way through the year that I was not as enamored with the topic that I wanted to study as I thought I was, and I hadn't hit it off with the only logical choice for an advisor in that topic, so I wanted to get out something totally different.

<comment><USER4> > I managed to get my MS in CS back in the early 90s in one calendar year.

I had a similar path, RIT has (or had) a dual degree program for Computer Science that only added a year to the regular undergrad program. Rather than take free electives, you swapped in the additional master's course you needed and all your undergrad classes became master's level courses (i.e. more work). I was suffering from depression at the time, so it took me a year to do my master's project (it's on Github, and it's not hard to find me there).

I thought about going back for my PhD, but then realized the cost wasn't worth it.

> The funny thing is that I didn't intend to be so mercenary.

I was and still am. I got my degree from the perspective it would help me get more money. I strongly believe the only thing my job is for is money.

<comment><USER5> Shout out for RIT!

I actually didn't know there really was a PhD program in Computer Science. I just found this page with a link to list of dissertation defenses[1] that I have never seen before; historically, I've always thought it was a big joke because of this page with the overview[2] link that just recurses on itself and just displays a different image... (go ahead, don't you want to read the overview? Just click again...)

TIL that RIT has actually given out a few PhDs in Computer Science! [3] Of course I feel like I earned a PhD by spending seven years there just to get my bachelor's degree.

[1]: [https://www.cs.rit.edu/phd-computing-and-information- science...](https://www.cs.rit.edu/phd-computing-and-information-sciences)

[2]: [https://www.rit.edu/gccis/computingsecurity/academics/phd/ov...](https://www.rit.edu/gccis/computingsecurity/academics/phd/overview)

[3]: [https://www.cs.rit.edu/recent-phd-dissertations-advised- cs-f...](https://www.cs.rit.edu/recent-phd-dissertations-advised-cs-faculty)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> They make a single mention of what could be a significant contributing factor; student debt. A quick google search for India and China show that many of their top public universities charge ~$300 and ~$800/year while UC Berkeley is over $14,000.

After 4 years, with on-campus housing the first year, the Berkeley student owes about $72,000 while the Indian student owes $1,200.

As far as the income differences between the countries, the average Indian saves 31.4% [1] of an average $6,490/yr which means $2,037. While in the US it's 5.7% [2] of $58,030 which means $3,307.

So stated another way, the Indian education costs 0yr/7mon of average savings while the US one costs 21yr/9mon. By the time the American child has their bachelors, the American parents are already broke while the Indian parent's savings reserves haven't been depleted - a 2 year graduate program is something they still have the cash for.

[1] [https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-average-savings-rate-in- In...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-average-savings-rate-in-India-How- much-should-a-person-save-if-he-earns-1-lakh-month-or-10-lakh-month)

[2] [https://www.fool.com/saving/2016/10/03/heres-the-average- ame...](https://www.fool.com/saving/2016/10/03/heres-the-average-americans- savings-rate.aspx)

<comment> aaron-lebo Not sure you can compare them so directly. $800 is an unobtainable sum (?) for 1 billion Chinese/Indians. I'd also wonder about the difference in quality between UC Berkeley and a lot of those colleges. They are probably very good but US colleges tend to dominate world rankings (partially why everyone goes to them). If outsiders are willing to spend money in your schools, what happens to prices?

I'm also unsure about the comparison between averages (500 billion impoverished + 500 billion wealthy makes for an uninformative average), or savings rate. If US families save less (for cultural reasons or they don't need to), it's not relevant. Or it might be late.

<comment><USER7> $800 is about the monthly salary for so many Chinese I'm finding it hard to think it is unobtainable.

<comment><USER8> That's more than double the median Chinese wage.

Granted, that's still a lot of people in absolute terms.

<comment><USER9> [https://www.google.ca/search?q=china+gdp+per+capita&ie=utf-8...](https://www.google.ca/search?q=china+gdp+per+capita&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&dcr=0&ei=ir_9WdyKDqqCjwTbgrnACw)

In 2016,the average Chinese GDP per capita is 8,123.18 US dollars, it is almost as much as Russia ($8,748.18) or Mexico ($8.201.31). This really surprised me.

<comment><USER8> Yes, but that's because there are a few people who are extraordinarily wealthy. The median is a better measure of what people make.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The article misses something I think makes part of it: grad school is a ticket to establishing some level of connection in the US for foreigners, and some use it as a spring board to getting a job in the US. They need this because a graduate degree actually is losing its value given the poor job market for PhDs. The prospects of a job after graduate school are diminishing the closer you get to a PhD; it just makes less sense to go to grad school when you can get good jobs with just a BS in CS for example...unless there is something else to make the ROI better.

Finally, the stats mentioned are merely fractions, not overall numbers. What could merely be happening is the growth is coming from international students, not that less Americans are headed to grad school.

<comment><USER11> Foreigners who went to grad school are very heavily represented in Silicon Valley. Perhaps going all the way for a PhD is not worth it (debatable, some of my CS PhD friends have done incredibly well) but a Masters is definitely a strong path to success.

<comment><USER12> The extra H1-B spots for advanced degree holders may have something to do with that.

<comment><USER13> Or the $500k+ you can earn. Most of the people in that region have at least a masters degree and likely more.

<comment><USER14> If you focus on computer vision / machine learning at least

<comment><USER15> The vast majority of these people are not pulling home $500k per year salaries, or even total comp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A few things:

Grad students from foreign countries are not crippled with debt. They get affordable educations and can afford to be in school longer in America. Comparable American students have been consumed by debt and must get real jobs to pay it off.

If undergrads were paying $7K / year for those degrees instead of $50k, things would be very different.

Second, universities who are rich from plundering their undergrads by way of massive administrative overhead resulting in skyrocketing loans...grad students are a source of labor for the schools at low cost.

By importing foreign students who are desperate and cheap, these universities are able to continue adding administrative bloat while exploiting foreign workers for the research tasks they once gave to their American contemporaries.

You want American grad students? Reform the loan situation, stop allowing universities to have their cake and eat it too. If they charge astronomical fees, they shouldn't get to outsource that work to foreign students and then whine about not having more Americans.

<comment><USER17> $100k for grad school is not affordable for an Asian when annual family income is $5-10k and interest rates on loans are 15%.

<comment><USER18> Those families are probably not the ones sending their kids. Only those who can afford it go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's been lots of interest here in grad school articles recently, especially where it is a relatively bad deal or career decision. They're all related somehow, but I think this is probably more about immigrant/native dynamics than anything else.

In the late 80s, my Mum did a PHD in the US and we lived there for 5 years. Many of her friends were foreign grad students. Others, Texan academics.

Migration via academia has always been a good option. There are special visas. Sometimes financial support. A foreign students application form. More importantly, there's a structured and welcoming subculture you join by default. You will have a place in university society.

I'm reminded of a provocative (to me) Tyler Cowen bit about formal dress and class mobility. When culture (corporate culture in that case) is formalised, it is easier for outsider to adopt and participate in. You can buy a good suit. You can't easily adopt ways of speaking, casual fashion, and such. They're too subtle for outsiders. Cultural signals are still important, but the subtle ones are more exclusive because they are subtle.

Anyway, something similar is probably happening here. Academia is formal. It's meritocracy is formalised. You can talk funny and think funny, but you're still a PHD candidate, professor or whatnot. You can access that "social capital" to put it in annoying modern terms.

Like tyoma suggests in this thread, natives have more options to choose from.

There are other reasons, of course. I suspect this is one of the top ones.

</comment><comment><USER20> Grad school for Americans is not a good investment, except maybe MBA, but that should belong to its own category. Often too short, less than 2 years, not really enough time for decent research, yet expensive, the chance of getting sponsorship is slim.

Grad school in US, thus is made for foreign students to get their foot on this country. It has a few attractions: It is short. Cost less than Bachelor Degree. It offers a chance to get familiar with the culture . Count as advanced degree so bigger chance to land a H1-B visa under condition you have a job offer. And most importantly, American Universities know this. They specifically design the programs to target foreigners, and made a shit load of money out of it.

<comment> aaron-lebo If you look at it from a purely economics perspective, sure. But many grad programs are not that expensive. It's hard to overestimate how valuable it is to get the grad class experience (much smaller classes, direct interaction and discussion with world experts in their fields, and really interesting discussions/viewpoints due to those foreign students). There's no learning experience quite like it.

<comment><USER20> Those programs, with the mentioned quality would not be cheap. But that might be true for US citizens, because usually the school charges less from them. I think I missed somewhat the definition of the grad school here. Majority of the grad students come here for Masters not PhDs, and for the former, the stuff you mentioned, like smaller classes, interaction with professors cannot really be taken for granted, and from my anecdotal experience, it is not true.

<comment> aaron-lebo The stuff I mentioned was true for both masters students and PhDs (they were in the same classes), but it may vary by field.

<comment><USER21> PhD students don't take 'classes' - they do their own independent research. It's a research degree. If someone else can teach you a class on it then it's clearly not cutting edge enough to do a PhD on!

<comment> aaron-lebo Class hours are a substantial requirement of many phd programs. You can't do independent research without knowing what's come before. :)

<comment><USER21> You learn about what's come before by reading papers and reproducing experiments.

I can't imagine how a class for PhD students works - everyone has such focused research topics that how can you find something relevant to teach to more than one person at a time?

When I did my PhD on optimising dynamic programming languages I would guess there were maybe ten other students in the entire world doing something vaguely similar at the same time. How do you do a class for that in one institution?

<comment><USER22> It's a fact that PhD students do a few courses, at least in Physics and Electronics.

The students I've met found few classes related to their research. So they signed up for whatever sounded good.

<comment><USER23> It varies a lot by country and field (if they do classes or not). I didn't have to do classes when I did my PhD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I know in a few graduate medical labs international students are seen as a big labor plus. No family, no friends, in a foreign environment, under a lot of pressure to succeed. You can pretty much ask them to work 80+ hour weeks easily. Americans have family, friends, marriages, maybe children! It's not this way in a majority of labs, but I definitely have friends in labs just like this.

Also I agree with the points many others have made, debt is a major factor. I got a undergrad stem degree at a UC and only went back to great school after working for three years and paying that debt off.

Plus: I'm enjoying the research.

Negative: I'm the oldest student and halving my salary for several years is not a great experience!

</comment><comment><USER25> I see the chance to draw lottery twice in H1B visa mentioned, but a more important benefit is the OPT visa. Any STEM graduates from an American school can apply for this visa, which lasts for about two years. During this two years you can work and draw the lotteries repeatedly.

For some of us, the major value proposition of a MS degree in US is not its teaching, but the gateway to US employment market. Those luckily born in the US doesn't need to spend time and money on such privileges.

</comment><comment><USER26> FYI, many top schools (MIT, Harvard, etc.) have explicit quota on how many international undergrads are admitted per year (at MIT it's about 120 students, or 10 percent of undergrads). There is no such limit at grad level, since the money typically comes from research groups and grants, so the limiting factor is really the research group's budget.

<comment><USER27> I didn't know about this quota, but it doesn't really matter. The main point, which the article didn't mention, is that being an undergrad international student is far more difficult. First, the high schools exams can be different and students might not be eligible to apply. Then there's tuition cost. How many Chinese and Indians can afford ~40K/year not including room and other expenses? Foreign students cannot apply for scholarship.

It makes much more sense to study almost for free in India/China/Finland/etc. and then do a GRE and apply to grad school in the US. PhD students don't need to pay tuition and even get a monthly stipend. Also many MS students get some sort of scholarship (but not all).

<comment><USER26> Check UT Austin, they admit a ton of international students every year. Undoubtedly UT Austin is a decent school, but it also milks a lot of money from international students.

[https://utexas.app.box.com/v/2016report](https://utexas.app.box.com/v/2016report)

There are two parts in your point. One, the exam. SAT/high school grade is basically a joke for India/China students, which can send a town of 2400 kids. Spending one or two years preparing and you can pass whatever exam set, SAT or ACT or anything. Two, the tuition fee. You clearly underestimate the financial ability of wealthy Asian families, and I had talked to people who pay the entire tuition fee (200k+) for kids to study in four years. Of course not everyone can pay that, but schools also offer partial scholarship (and thus it's quite common for students to come with 50 or 75 percent scholarship).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I went to pretty good school in India for my undergrad and grad. It was not sufficiently challenging. I did another masters in the US from a middle tier University. I found it more challenging and engaging. I've been motivated to continue learning and taking class (both via MOOCs and on prem) when necessary to learn new concepts. I love the passion here, the library system and the access to star performances and innovators via meet ups and conferences.

</comment><comment><USER29> Do we have any numbers of how many of these foreign individuals stay in the country after graduation? When you think about how immigration works, immigrants are very disproportionately likely to be high-performing individuals, given the criteria for them to enter the country. If they stay in the country to contribute to the economy after graduation, then all I can say is that I'm glad they still think that this is a desirable country to come to.

<comment><USER30> I can't speak to overall statistical numbers, but of the 75+ international graduate students that I've spoken to, I would estimate at least 85% plan to stay in the U.S.

I find this particularly surprising given that their status is essentially that of indentured servants; their advisors can deport them at any time with only 14 days of notice. This one-way power dynamic can produce cruel, callous treatment and merciless working hours, both of which I've observed first-hand. And yet, these same professors will turn around and collaborate politely and respectfully with American students (assuming that they will take on American students in their labs; many will not!).

It's really very depressing.

<comment><USER31> My friend quit his postdoc with a prestigious researcher in his field after witnessing the abuse the international students in the same group were subjected to.

<comment><USER32> My friend stopped graduate school at a MS and didn't pursue a PhD because all the American grad students were forced to take teaching assistantships while the foreign grad students were given research assistantships.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The hidden assumption in the article and most of the comments I see is that Americans are __not __applying to these graduate schools. It 's also possible that Americans __are __applying, but the international students are simply much better qualified and are therefore admitted in greater proportion.

<comment><USER34> My stepfather has done PhD admissions for his department for many years. Most of their applications don't come from Americans, _and_ some portion of foreign undergrad programs are _sometimes_ more rigorous. They basically implement affirmative action, almost, for the Americans who apply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Would grad schools recruit more Americans if

a) their international intake was capped

b) they were forced to offer more livable stipends

c) the odds to get tenure track increased?

Grad school is a pretty bad deal for US citizens, and so much of that is the highly pyramidal structure of over hiring cheap grad students as below market labor for a shrinking pool of tenured professors.

</comment><comment><USER36> > _In the fall of 2015, about 55 percent of all graduate students in > mathematics, computer sciences and engineering were from abroad. The dearth > of Americans is even more pronounced in hot STEM fields: About 64 percent of > doctoral candidates and almost 68 percent in master's programs last year > were international students._

The NYT is trying to vaguely suggest that Americans are being crowded out by foreigners and that Americans can't get advanced degrees because foreigners take all the spots.

But it could be BOTH true that foreigners make up the majority and that Americans do get many more advanced degrees than in the past -- because university education has expanded greatly in the last few decades.

For sake of example: Suppose in 1950, there was 100,000 advanced degrees awarded in the US per year and they were all Americans. Suppose today that there are 1,000,000 advanced degrees of which 45% are Americans (and 55% foreigners). In my contrived example, it's still true that foreigners make up the majority, but the number of Americans getting advanced degrees has jumped from 100,000 to 450,000.

I don't know if I'm right about this, but just saying that the NYT hasn't proved their point.

<comment><USER37> > The NYT is trying to vaguely suggest that Americans are being crowded out by > foreigners and that Americans can't get advanced degrees because foreigners > take all the spots.

No, the article never suggests this, that sounds like your own bias.

First you set up a strawman---and then you don't even bother knocking it down! You don't need to make up numbers "for sake of example." All this is information is available, just Google it.

Finally, it is not "the NYT" making an argument. The author is Nick Wingfield, it says so right there on top.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Grad school is an immigration pathway these days that in my experience brings zero benefit to most jobs.

Where it matters, you see a more normal/typical level of diversity.

For most things tech, it's meaningless. I literally give it zero weight for hiring unless the candidate had a non-qualifying bachelors degree, needed a couple of years of experience, or they went to a foreign school for undergrad and a US grad school (less paperwork).

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm an American, and I just started graduate school. Georgia Tech OMSCS. Very nice program.

<comment><USER40> It's interesting - when OMSCS started, there was so much speculation that it would be flooded with overseas students who would use it to get a cheap US degree that would ultimately help them to migrate.

Instead, OMSCS actually has a far, far _higher_ proportion of American students than GATech's on-campus MSCS program...

<comment><USER41> If you're an international student, a physical presence in the US is one of the things you're buying with your grad school tuition.

Conversely American grad school attendees are mostly career switchers who already have an established life in a place that's probably not Atlanta.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I remember 20 some years ago... that I had asked a few grad students about their GPA and GRE scores before applying. I remember having a decent recommendation, gpa .5 higher than a couple of guys, and OK GRE. Didn't get into the masters program. As a supposedly privileged white guy, I think there is much more to it. I think the schools prefer foreign students as they will take the shit pay and long hours much like H1B slavery.

</comment><comment><USER43> It's about to get worse if the new GOP tax plan passes. It would tax tuition waivers.

[https://twitter.com/ClausWilke/status/926454752136892416](https://twitter.com/ClausWilke/status/926454752136892416)

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm a frustrated grad student in STEM. I posted here a few days ago crowdsourcing for career advice on what to do next:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15610675](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15610675)

Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER45> I think there are two reasons why you would see a spike in internationals in a graduate cohort and their number being less in an undergraduate class:

1) experience. most of the international students mentioned in the article from India, China, Turkey, Korea want to have that experience of going to a school in a different country, meeting students from around the globe, listen to lectures and work with people from different background and skills, I think this is something you would certainly lack if you choose to go to grad school in the same geography you got your undergraduate education. Think about this for an American student, who is not so motivated to go to grad school because environment wise it is not going to be a whole lot different than the professors you had for your undergrad class. I'm curious to see numbers for American undergrads who have gone to Europe or Japan to get their graduate degrees for the experience, this might actually be skewed because half the students here in America gets that experience through study abroad programs.

2) cost. the article says there is a very small number of undergraduate internationals compared to graduate student population, it comes down to cost. if you were coming from India, China or the other foreign countries mentioned in the article money wise it would be very expensive for you to pay for 4 years of undergraduate degree compared to 2 years of masters, PhD can be an outlier here, but it has its own benefits. so if you can get an undergraduate degree without causing a dent in your bank account and if you are almost certain that you will eventually go get a masters degree in another country, budget wise that's the most smart thing to do. by the time you are done with your undergrad you'd have a good school experience to go to another country, blend in, and go through school. The reason I mentioned about PhD being an outlier is, with a doctoral degree you might end up being a professor or a research scientist, but when it comes to a masters vs bachelors, chances are, for most of them, you both will likely end up in a similar job at Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and others. so why pay twice to get there. not to forget, you might end up with some sort of funding while doing a graduate degree compared to undergraduate.

</comment><comment><USER46> What about non-STEM fields? Are Americans well represented in other graduate programs?

Plus, if schools want more Americans in graduate STEM programs, couldn't they just use affirmative action to tilt the demographics in the direction they want?

<comment><USER47> I got my phd in communications in 2014 from a Big 10 school. International students were around 10-15% of the grad students and most of those were from eastern europe. So at least our department was very different than the STEM departments discussed in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> This is everywhere, not just here. My wife is Chinese and she tells me in China, ppl don't see the need for grad school unless you go abroad. They rather work or make their own business if they stay in China. The reason they go abroad is to try to find a job in the foreign country, have a degree in USA and go back to find a job easier. All the stupid programs usa universities are making up just to get more students is useless for real life. I hope universities becomes useless in a decade or so and we find a better way to get knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER49> The aspect the article did not raise was that according to the recent Kaggle survey, a majority of people practicing in data science work have graduate degrees (57.4%). This will likely drive a new interest amongst Americans.

[https://www.kaggle.com/surveys/2017](https://www.kaggle.com/surveys/2017)

</comment><comment><USER50> Before or after all the grad students couldn't get jobs because the market was full?

</comment><comment><USER51> It is a bit out of topic, but anyway: Is it possible to defend a PhD thesis without taking a graduate program at all? Imagine an industry researcher without a PhD degree who is willing to obtain one.

</comment><comment><USER43> From the caption on the first photo:

> A computer science class at N.Y.U.'s _Tandon School_ of Engineering, where > some 80 percent of graduate students are _from other countries_.

</comment><comment><USER52> Great article and conversation. The important factor for average US undergrad student not opting for graduate school is definitely due to the astronomical loans they accumulate during undergrad years.

I simply couldn't for the life of me comprehend why majority of US undergrads are OK taking on such a huge amount liability and jeopardizing their future prospect? It perhaps could be because "Everyone is doing it" or because "There are no other avenues.." I believe the system is setup in such a way that it's unavoidable and unfair to the students in the name of getting an "education".

Here is a different path/perspective.

I came to the US from one of the poor south Asian countries at 18 to do my undergrad despite my parents telling me to go for my graduate school in the early 2000s. For grad school you don't pay tuition and you are paid for your expenses too working on a research or as a TA. I said to myself, US is the land of opportunity, possibilities are limitless, go early and figure out the specifics later. I was very young so yeah "let's do it" attitude prevailed. My parents were not wealthy either but they had assets enough to cough up tuition fees. I intentionally selected a small public university in the middle of nowhere that offered partial scholarship (more on this later). My tuition fees per year was 9k after scholarship if I remember correctly.

After I landed, I registered for 15- 18 credits per semester and also took a job part time and that was enough to cover my living expenses and then some. I believe poverty or coming from a background of family without a lot of means or a support system to fallback on is a great motivating factor to not accumulate any debt. I had to hustle pretty much throughout my undergrad years, if I wasn't in a class, I'd be in the library doing assignment and if I wasn't in the library I'd be at my job. I wasn't at a frat house partying or playing sports or joining meetup groups or doing the normal things any regular undergrad students would do. I consider myself an average student too, nothing close to the best and the brightest but managed to maintain a 3.7 GPA and graduated with a Computer Science degree.

In my last semester, I did two internships (Summer/Fall) in small companies because when I went to couple of job fairs just to check it out, I noticed that companies really wanted to see some hands on experience. I couldn't believe they would pay for internship too and better than my part time job. I worked out a deal with my professor to allow me to work in my final semester at a local company which counted towards a seminar credit too.

When I graduated, I had 0 debt, three job offers from mid size companies starting at 50k - 65K in a mid size market (not Silicon Valley). My colleges at work include Ivy League graduates along with those from top private/public colleges that cost 30k - 80k per year in tuition and they were all in student debt. So in hindsight, I think I made a good choice going to a middle of a nowhere school. It really made no different in getting a Job or acquiring skills. Sure I didn't have a brand recognition but I could hold my own during the the interviews to get offers.

Once again, I'm not the smartest guy but I had strong determination not ask my parents for money on take on loans. Whatever, they offered me initially for tuition, I paid back after I started working full time and then some. Someone pointed out about culture in Asian family where parents do anything they can to invest in their Child's education and that's because it's what they believe is a way to a better life.

After being in the industry for couple of years, I wanted to increase my depth/breadth of knowledge in my field so I found a Masters program that I could pursue part time (nights/weekend). I got my new employer to pony up half of the tuition (I tried for full tuition reimbursemnt) as well which I required to accept their job offer. Total cost was $20k tuition for 3 years at a so called "top 20 nationally ranked engineering school." I could care less about the ranking...

By 27 I had both undergrad/masters and 5+ years of experience in the industry. Once again I had no debt.

I believe the system is setup in a such a way that it's so easy to take on a huge loans for the majority of population without fully understanding the implications for the future. I mean kids are 18. It feels as if it's almost similar to using one credit card to pay for the minimum payment of another credit card.

Also cost of education keep on going higher and higher. I think anytime government gets involved the price balloons astronomically. Take a look here [https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/price-changes-in- consumer...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/price-changes-in-consumer- goods-and-services-in-the-usa-1997-2017) #1 is college tuition followed by Medicare and child care.

I think 20 years from now, it really wouldn't matter which school you go to as the market is going to put higher emphasis on, what you have done or can do (skill wise) as opposed to which school you go to. Until then us US tax payers are going to foot the bill for all these student loans that are eventually going to blow up like the housing bubble.

So I leave you with some food thought, if a kid from a very poor country can come to the US with little to no means but dedicated enough not take any loans to pursue higher education and pursue the American dream, I think it should be far more easier to native US born students.

</comment><comment><USER53> The Economist found that between 2012 and 2015 the three biggest Indian outsourcing firms—TCS, Wipro and Infosys—submitted over 150,000 visa applications for positions that paid a median salary of $69,500. In contrast, America's five biggest tech firms—Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft—submitted just 31,000 applications, and proposed to pay their workers a median salary of $117,000

[http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21716630-not- goo...](http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21716630-not-good- argument-against-them-h-1b-visas-do-mainly-go-indian-outsourcing)

[https://qz.com/889524/the-us-says-oracle-is-encouraging- indi...](https://qz.com/889524/the-us-says-oracle-is-encouraging-indians-to- hire-others-indians-and-its-killing-diversity/)</comment>


Did you know airports can opt-out of TSA screening? - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Amid-airport-anger_-GOP-takes-aim-at-screening-1576602-108259869.html <comment><USER2> I find it interesting that a Republican Representative that helped author the bill is now pointing out that airports can opt out of TSA screening.

TSA came about due to Bush Era/Post-911 policies. Yet, I can see this turning into an "Obama issue". Both parties / Washington really is at fault here.

I hope the egregious policies get reversed and we stop the security theater trend.</comment>


Using Twilio as a doorman - <AUTHOR> http://blog.filepicker.io/post/49604562965/twilio-is-our-doorman

<comment><AUTHOR> As it turns out, our friend Danielle had written about something similar two years ago. [http://www.daniellemorrill.com/2010/06/how-i-built-a- multi-u...](http://www.daniellemorrill.com/2010/06/how-i-built-a-multi-user- door-buzzer-for-our-apartment/)

Great minds :D

<comment><USER2> I did this at Loggly right after I read her post! :). Good stuff!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What domain hosting provider you use? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for a service that:<p>1. Have clear pricing without hidden or obscure costs. 2. (Optional) expose api for automating the hosting process. <comment><USER2> I'm using Namecheap at the moment, and it seems to work pretty well overall. Seems to have an API too:

[https://www.namecheap.com/support/api/intro.aspx](https://www.namecheap.com/support/api/intro.aspx)

<comment><USER3> I'll 2nd this. I've been using them for a few years now and have been satisfied with their services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What do you mean by domain hosting? Are you talking about a registrar, or a DNS hosting service (or both, which is common)?

<comment><USER4> To follow up: I use NameSilo as a registrar _specifically_ because domains (and dns hosting) is _all_ they do.

Separation of concerns, and no constant bullshit to navigate their admin tool and get to domain management when required.

They have DNS hosting too but I don't use it.</comment></comment>


Google Rumored To Have YouTube-Based Movie Streaming Service On Deck - <AUTHOR> http://hothardware.com/News/Google-Rumored-To-Have-YouTubeBased-Movie-Streaming-Service-On-Deck/

<comment><USER2> I hope they can improve their CDN. Lately, I've been seeing lots of Buffering when watching YouTube Videos.</comment>


Stanford researchers show fracking's impact to drinking water sources - <AUTHOR> http://news.stanford.edu/news/2016/march/pavillion-fracking-water-032916.html <comment><USER2> Our legal system has created limited liability corporations to improve economic efficiency, and then a network of regulations to keep corporations from doing bad things that liability might dissuade a normal person from doing. We lurch between economically damaging regulations after something really bad happens, to regulatory capture after industry lobbying gets the attention of politicians.

It seems to me that the whole thing is a mess that doesn't work very well.

Here is my alternate proposal. Corporations who engage in risky long-term behavior should have to purchase long-term insurance to cover liability for what they are doing. These insurance contracts would be on terms set by insurers.

Behind the scenes insurers could cover these contracts by putting money into index funds. The fund would cover liability, the cost ensuring compliance with insurance terms, and after the period was up, would pay off investors.

These funds would therefore trade at a discount to regular index funds that represents market estimates of the present value of future liability. Therefore the insurance costs to companies would be a free market estimate of the cost to others of what you are doing.

And voila! Very little regulation. No regulatory capture. And people will get compensation. (And LLCs can remain limited liability.)

<comment><USER3> _Here is my alternate proposal. Corporations who engage in risky long-term behavior should have to purchase long-term insurance to cover liability for what they are doing. These insurance contracts would be on terms set by insurers. And voila! Very little regulation. No regulatory capture. And people will get compensation._

No. The whole point is that these "risky behaviors" are quite capable of inflicting damages (such as the _permanent_ contamination of water tables in certain areas) that can't possibly be compensated by the any conceivable "insurance payout". Such behaviors (once identified) should be strictly prohibited. Economic penalties against the corporate entities (aka "regulation") will of course never be sufficient. The only effective deterrent is jail time for for the decision makers (in addition to complete confiscation of their personal assets).

And BTW by "jail time" I mean _serious_ jail time, as in multiple decades of jail time, and/or life sentences if necessary.

Flipping back in the chronology of your post a bit:

 _We lurch between economically damaging regulations after something really bad happens, to regulatory capture after industry lobbying gets the attention of politicians._

I agree with you wholeheartedly about the need to stop lurching. That's why we need to get serious about criminal penalties for this kind of behavior -- not to throw in the towel and entrust the safety of our irreplaceable freshwater resources wondrous self-regulating powers of the insurance industry.

The environment is not a casino, in other words. This is the health of uncounted generations we're talking about -- which will come into being long after any of these massive insurance payouts your proposal would seem to bank on could have possibly had any ameliorative effect.

<comment><USER4> Some mistakes can only happen once. Money doesn't fix that class of mistake.

<comment><USER5> One of the most annoying cliche arguments in American political discourse is that money is the universal 100% effective solution to all problems.

We just had a nuke plant melt down? That's going to just cost a lot of money! We want to provide universal top quality free on-demand healthcare for everyone? Just quadruple spending and change absolutely nothing else! We want to colonize mars in 10 years. That will just be a few trillion. No problem! Nine women working together to have a baby in 1 month? Just a few billion in government R&D bucks and we'll have it solved in a jiffy!

<comment> cat-dev-null Argh, that's a frustrating fallacy, often posited with sincere intentions but often disconnected from practical implementation considerations.

In general terms, effectiveness and affordability of budget outlay should be the primary concerns. Instead, budget is typically orthogonal to effectiveness of quality of problem characterization, planning, procurement, execution and follow-up. Oddly, better results can sometimes be paradoxically realized by reducing budgets where there are capital-inefficient organizations by teaching resourcefulness... many bad habits emerge when people have too much cash available to spend frivolously. There are many instances where greater outlays are cheaper TCO-wise in the long run, so the "penny wise, pound wise" mantra tends to be a good guideline.

Also, in the US, defense spending, education and social security are sacred cows for various reasons.

Question military-industrial complex spending and be prepared for accusations of unpatriotism and treason for "not supporting the troops." These are completely specious but used to guard the hen-house. Robert Gates was the most recent, effective reformer of DoD, but the honeymoon didn't last long.

Education is seen as important human right however NCBLA has foisted short- term pseudo-results upon teachers. So the problem is still seen as not enough money, usually because administration bureaucracy typically consumes a disproportionate fraction of total budget (or in extreme cases, embezzles cash outright).

Social security is a tough one because many people have no direct retirement savings, and no one humane wants to go the way of Korea, where the elderly are de-facto shunned and have nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "The research paints a picture of unsafe practices including the dumping of drilling and production fluids containing diesel fuel, high chemical concentrations in unlined pits and a lack of adequate cement barriers to protect groundwater."

... So it isn't the fracking per se, but toxic waste disposal and leaking in transit.

<comment><USER7> Pavilion is a pathological case. It's the rare area where producible oil is only hundreds of feet below the surface, at the same depths as groundwater [1]. All other plays of interest in the US are one to two miles deep. It's irresponsible to permit fracking in Pavilion. At the same time, polluting groundwater in Pavilion does not condemn fracking operations miles below the surface.

[1] [http://trib.com/business/energy/fracking-absolved-of- blame-e...](http://trib.com/business/energy/fracking-absolved-of-blame- elsewhere-but-in-pavillion- it-s/article_0290f527-b30f-512b-a6d0-95854dde38c8.html)

<comment><USER8> _polluting groundwater in Pavilion does not condemn fracking operations miles below the surface_

Still, this is an excellent example to point out that current regulation fails.

<comment><USER9> At best it shows that regulation in Wyoming failed. And even then there is debate: [http://energyindepth.org/mtn-states/stanford-researchers- rep...](http://energyindepth.org/mtn-states/stanford-researchers-repackage- epas-discredited-fracking-study-pavillion/)

<comment><USER8> There is always "debate" when an industry's profits are involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A timely posting as Oklahoma experienced a M4.2 earthquake last night, also attributed to fracking activities. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009–16_Oklahoma_earthquake_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009–16_Oklahoma_earthquake_swarms)

<comment><USER11> I get you stated a fact.

But we all know it's a dog whistle.

"As a result of the magnitude 5.6 earthquake on November 5, 2011, an estimated one million dollars in damage occurred in and around the Prague area.[51] So far, there has not been a significant amount of damage reported from other earthquakes"

Most industries cost the community 1 million $ (assuming this particular earthquake was even due to fracking)

This is why they pay tax.

You're not in a movie, fracking is not going to cause some sort of earthquake catastrophe.

Ever company that uses trucks could and does kill people.

<comment><USER12> >>You're not in a movie, fracking is not going to cause some sort of earthquake catastrophe.<<

I have in-laws that live north of Edmond OK and the almost daily tremors and quakes there have changed their lives to a certain degree...

My father-in-law goes out to check the brickwork on his house on a regular basis now, paying special attention to his chimney...things occasionally rattle off shelves and fall to the floor...

Injection well frequencies and volumes have now been reduced or entirely curtailed in certain areas of the state...

So, maybe life does indeed seem a bit surreal if you live in an affected area...

Drilling, fracking, and the use of injection wells to dispose of waste-water have apparently led to Oklahoma becoming as quake-prone as California...

The USGS quoted in a NY Times article:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/us/earthquake-risk-in- okla...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/us/earthquake-risk-in-oklahoma-and- kansas-comparable-to-california.html?_r=0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For balance, here is a rebuttal from the industry: [http://energyindepth.org/mtn-states/stanford-researchers- rep...](http://energyindepth.org/mtn-states/stanford-researchers-repackage- epas-discredited-fracking-study-pavillion/)

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm not surprised at all, nor am I surprised by the brutal effectiveness of corporate funded influence on legal, regulatory, and community remedies to these problems. Its as if the system 'wants' people to suffer.

<comment><USER14> People in places like Wyoming pretty regularly vote for less government interference and regulation of that kind of industry, so I guess they get what they're voting for.

And meanwhile, the rest of the US is extremely car-centric, so we do our part to increase demand for oil.

<comment><USER15> My partner works in civil engineering and water remediation throughout Wyoming. Most farmers and ranchers there aren't too keen on fracking, because they suffer from the practice more than anyone (runoff/polluted water tables). But, there's no chance for any sort of political opposition, because the vast majority of people simply won't vote blue, no matter what. Often times, on the city/county level, there is no alternative candidate, it's red vs. red and neither want to "take away jobs" by buying into "leftist tree-hugger" nonsense.

It will only change when the "jobs" are cleaning up the mess, which has already started, but most roughnecks aren't qualified; cleanup requires educated city-folk from out of town, which widens the us vs. them gap even more.

I'm generalizing, but the above is often exactly the case.

<comment><USER9> Farmers and ranchers don't need to allow oil and gas drilling if they don't want to. It's the point of private property.

<comment><USER14> What happens on ranch X may affect the groundwater on farm Y or in town Z, a few kilometers away. I have no idea about the distances involved, and presumably they vary a lot depending on a number of factors that you'd have to ask scientists about.

Ideally, you would be able to detect pollutants moseying off the property underground, just as you would cattle wandering off the ranch above ground, and your property system would work fine ("Bob, yer frackin' byproducts done cross over into mah property yesterday, an I cain't abide by that") , but presumably it's not easy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hm, maybe fracking should be subject to EPA regulation and disclose the chemicals used in the process afterall.

<comment><USER17> Psh, more government overregulation aimed at killing jobs.

/s

<comment><USER18> Of course we all need more and cheaper oil than need clean environment don't we?

<comment><USER19> "Well when there's revenue involved, why does anything else matter?" \- some business guy probably

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> In the other news, parts of India is its second year of severe drought : [http://www.ibtimes.com.au/suicide-rate-indian-farmers- rise-c...](http://www.ibtimes.com.au/suicide-rate-indian-farmers-rise-country- faces-urgent-water-crisis-1510457)

I wonder if Indian farmers would accept oil instead ?

The point being that fresh water is a infinitely more valuable resource than oil.

And we're squandering it to dig up stuff which we then nonchalantly burn.

I wonder what our grand children will think of these times.

</comment><comment><USER21> I was hoping for an article that showed how chemicals drifted thousands of feet through impermeable rock layers. Instead I see a picture and a bunch of fluff.

Modern wells with double casings and bentonite seals are far more advanced the loose standards used through the late 70s. Is there a link anywhere to the actual research?

</comment><comment><USER22> I've heard that the new laws being written in NY to prevent hydrolic fracking are being carefully wordsmithed so they will still allow fracking with natural gas instead. I wish I could find a source but im not sure how well known this issue is. Can anyone comment further?

</comment><comment><USER23> Oklahoma will be a superfund site.

</comment><comment><USER24> They should not have fracked in Pavilion, where oil is only hundreds of feet below surface. However, general opposition to fracking is nothing more than NIMBY sentiment. Let's see how that works:

1\. Fracking should be banned => oil supply decreases 2\. Gas price should stay low => import oil from the gulf 3\. We should not support Wahhabist Saudi Arabia => American energy independence! 4\. Back to step 1

People want to drive their cars and don't want to pay tax for public transportation. At the same time they want to protect the environment and be called "leader of the free world". They want to tell people they vote Bernie Sanders but deep down they wish Donald Trump wins the election.

<comment><USER25> The problem is there's no definition of what's technically safe, what's technically unsafe, and few, if any guidelines defining acceptable fracking procedures.

What goes into the ground? A proprietary mix of who knows what, and you can't find out because they won't tell you. It's a trade secret.

Where does that stuff go? Again, few if any simulations have been run on the long-term consequences of injecting this stuff into the ground.

It's not that fracking should be banned, it's that it should be _understood_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Clean water will be the next big commodity... Guess who has been buying it...

1+1=2

</comment><comment><USER27> How can I ever know who gets it right in such a highly politicized topic? Topics like that pose an epistemological problem to me because nobody can be trusted to report truthfully, without any political motivations.

</comment><comment><USER28> If you care about this, remember to vote in the primary, accordingly:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPVhPqy_Z6U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPVhPqy_Z6U)</comment>


Slick: A new approach to database access in Scala - <AUTHOR> http://reactive.xploregroup.be/blog/5/Slick:-A-new-approach-to-database-access-in-Scala

<comment><USER2> Slick is not without flaws. After using it for more than 2 years and following each new release, I ran against its limitations quite often and started looking for other DB libraries that supported some kind of type safety.

But of all the other libraries I tried (jOOQ, ScalikeJDBC, and some others) none of them were as elegant and easy to use as Slick, although some of them are easier to set up.

Right now, Slicks SQL queries are not optimized, so you better use a db that's good at query optimization (i.e. not MySQL 5.6, which will do unnecessary full table scans for some of slicks generated SQL)

<comment><AUTHOR> Slick has indeed some flaws, and for some projects these might be crucial, such as the query optimisation or some parts of the documentation. But it's a rather elegant solution for working with a database and I'm sure most of these issues will be solved over time. Imo certainly a library to keep following.</comment></comment>


New Google source code browsing tool  - <AUTHOR> http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2008/03/look-actual-code.html

<comment><USER2> Actually more interesting is their performance in scaling Google Code within the past couple weeks. Huge performance boosts!

I find that their syntax highlighting is quite quirky... sometimes it's incorrect. Colors aren't too great as well...

Functionality-wise it's great. Diffs are awesome to view. Easy UI

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like they went after Trac and the other SCM products with a raw and unfinished product - probably because the intern wrote it? :)

Google code will become a good alternative to sourceforge, when all this functionality matures... good for the free software projects!</comment>


Venezuela Refuses to Default, and Few People Seem to Understand Why - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-04/venezuela-refuses-to-default-few-people-seem-to-understand-why <comment><USER3> The second "conspiracy theory" explanation presented in the article seems the simplest and most plausible:

 _Close associates of the administration are major holders of the country's bonds and...the government fears it'd lose their much-needed support if the payments stopped coming in. Efforts to obtain comment from government press officials on this and other aspects of the story were unsuccessful._

Either that, or debt-holding institutions are willing to kick back a fraction of coupon payments to high ranking officials as an incentive to keep the payments flowing for as long as possible before a civil war or coup forces a restructuring.

Either way, servicing the debt is keeping government officials paid to the detriment of their starving countrymen.

<comment><USER4> Just as a first-order guess of your second half, what you describe sounds highly illegal.

The first part makes more sense - and it's not a conspiracy theory - they want to keep access to bond markets.

<comment><USER5> There's illegal, and then there's "illegal". You'd think with what we see in the news today you wouldn't have as many people saying public officials can't do something because it's illegal.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that law and rules may constrain officials in unexpected ways, leading to "illegal" but maybe not so bad. Officials may have "the root password" so to speak.

In this case, I think it probably would be bad, but its a haul to say that this applies here. "Maintaining access to bond markets" requires less lifting so I'd start looking there.

The current email server controversy highlights this - an appointed cabinet official may actually be subject to slightly different rules than other people. Of course this is perceived as unfair, but it might just be inherent in the system design - I don't actually know. There is emerging in security and safety culture a Fundamentalist "no exceptions" mentality. But formal systems have holes - we know this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's another possibility which wasn't mentioned in the article: Maybe the government is quite happy with the food shortages. They have used control of the food supply to reward their supporters and to punish their opponents; this gives them tremendous power, and why should they give up that power just for the sake of a few million starving citizens?

<comment><USER7> Of course the food shortages affect everyone, but cperciva is right, the government is handing out bags with food in the poorest sectors of the population. When these people are faced with the food shortage, and then they receive a handout from the government, they are being controlled and manipulated.

The government has stated before that these handouts (called CLAPS) are not for the middle class (which has been opposing the government), only for the lower classes. Of course, they claim that the middle class can afford food and that they are defending the poor.

Guess what? The rapidly shrinking middle class is also suffering from the huge lines which start as early as 6pm the day before outside the supermarkets to buy a bit of food. Those of us that cannot go to the lines (because we need to work to actually afford food) need to buy in the black market (called "bachaqueros", almost always someone with govt connections) at 10x the regular prices.

We have the exact same situation with medicine. Patients are dying in hospitals because there's no medicine. Something as simple as Acetaminophen is incredibly hard to find.

I have a newborn daughter and she was supposed to get her 2 month vaccinations and I cannot find them anywhere.

The situation here is just incredibly difficult.

<comment><USER8> I'm sorry to hear that. What has the experience been like for you to buy food? Are you stuck in the lines as well? How do restaurants obtain raw ingredients with which to cook?

<comment><USER7> Well, I've basically just been eating what I can find the easiest. I don't really go to the lines. I cannot afford to waste a whole day in a line where I don't even know what they are going to hand out or if I'm even going to be able to buy something.

I just came back from a friends place and he told me he almost got stuck in a dangerous looting situation because people got pissed because they've been in line for 10 hours and the food ran out. Plus the National Guard and the military are getting paid by black market gangs to let them cut in line and people notice that.

For example there have been long lines in every bakery to buy french bread, which is very common to eat here. I just don't eat it. Same thing with arepas, which is one of our main dishes. Since you can't get the flour (called Harina Pan) without waiting over 12 hours in line I just don't eat it. I've got some I bought from one of the black market guys some time ago but we are running out soon.

More and more stuff is getting more scarce. Rice disappeared some time ago, milk shows up every now and then. The food that you can get is extremely expensive. For example, ketchup had been missing for some time now. Suddenly it's everywhere. It used to cost around Bs.200 and now it costs Bs. 1500.

I wouldn't mind going without certain goods, but now with a baby I'm constantly worried. Diapers and formula are almost non-existent. We stocked up last year on diapers when they could still be found and the baby is doing OK right now because my wife managed to breastfeed exclusively. But not everyone is so lucky.

I don't really know how restaurants manage, I've got a friend that has a small fast food place and I know he pays some guys from a bakery for bread, and meat is already expensive so you can get that pretty easily. But I know a hotel nearby that had to remove arepas from the breakfast menu (which was unthinkable here) because they cannot find the flour and I guess they don't want to pay black market rates.

This is the kind of thing that happens when you have a currency exchange control and price controls. Stuff gets locked in an artificial price for too long and the producers just give up. The government tried to regulate the price of eggs. Next day, you could not find a single egg anywhere. The flour used to make arepas was regulated at an absurd price, something like Bs.30. Not even the packaging costs that.

One common misconception though, is that we cannot find any food. The basic things like rice, flour, bread, milk, etc are what's hard to find. If you've got the money and you want to go to a restaurant and get a lobster you can. But the basic stuff we used to eat every day for a reasonable price cannot be bought without going to the lines or paying black market prices. Medicines are hard to find for everyone.

Recently there was quite a commotion on the social networks because some dumbass from Europe came here to make a video for some pro-govt guys and said everything was peachy because he went to the liquor stores and found champagne, went to a gourmet market and saw foie gras, lobster and jamon serrano. But he forgot to mention he probably could not find a square of toilet paper to wipe his ass :)

Sorry for the huge wall of text and rambling. It's really hard to put my thoughts in order when I try to explain this stuff, especially in a foreign language.

<comment><USER9> > The government tried to regulate the price of eggs. Next day, you could not > find a single egg anywhere.

If the results are so glaringly ineffective, why do you think the Government keeps pursuing price controls?

Is this Hubris, do they not see the effect on supply from their insulated mansions, or do they just think they can get it right this next time?

<comment><USER7> I think it's just plain old populism. They go on TV screaming about having to "defend the poor from the big bad private sectors that want to topple the government with their economic war with artificially induced high prices. The price of eggs has to be Bs.500 a carton!"

Meanwhile , just the cardboard for producing the packaging for the eggs costs Bs.200, chicken feed Bs. 300, the govt increases the minimum wage 4 times a year to fight "the economic war",etc.

Of course, anyone producing eggs is now working at a loss, so they just produce less and move part of the production to the black market.

I really have no idea what their endgame is. Maybe the idea is to actually try to finish off the private producers that are left in the country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm surprised the article did not mention the theory that they have not defaulted because of the numerous state-owned assets they possess abroad which could be seized by creditors.

"Caracas fears a default could open up claims to PdVSA assets, such as rigs, refineries and oil shipments. One target by creditors could be the company's Houston-based subsidiary, Citgo Petroleum Corp., which has three U.S. refineries that receive hundreds of thousands of barrels of Venezuelan oil a day."

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-decaying-venezuela-debts- get-...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-decaying-venezuela-debts-get- repaid-1456358943)

<comment><USER11> How much are those assets worth? Wouldn't the bonds be worth more if these assets were that substantial?

<comment><USER12> Assets are worth more to Venezuela than anyone else is willing to pay. In case of defaulting, creditors can takeover those assets cheaper than they could buy them otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If Venezuela defaulted on foreign debts, it will be very difficult (and/or expensive) to borrow again in the future.

Venezuela is essentially hedging their situation is temporary (however temporary, temporary is), and having a good economic standing in the future may depend heavily on foreign investments (particularly since Venezuela is a petroleum based economy).

Burning those bridges now could cripple Venezuela permanently.

The same question could be posed of any nation with impoverished citizens and foreign debts. We could even examine the USA, which has never defaulted, even during the height of the Great Depression.

Choosing to default on those debts and instead send temporary (and likely insignificant, once the bureaucracy runs it's course) aid to some citizens jeopardizes the entire nation. Simply put, the trade-off is not worth it.

<comment><USER14> Can you give some examples of where a country defaulted and was worse off? I think most recently Iceland defaulted and they seem to be doing alright - <USER2> maybe given it's size it doesn't really count.

<comment><USER15> Iceland didn't default. They let their commercial banks die without intervention from the government. Also known as what the US Treasury should have done in 2008. If something is too big to fail - it must be killed immediately.

<comment><USER16> > If something is too big to fail - it must be killed immediately.

No, if its too big to fail, it must not be allowed to fail -- but also must be as expeditiously as possible broken up into units which are not too big to fail.

<comment><USER17> Kind of like gradually splitting up your giant monster truck Java thing running all your endpoints into a variety of microservices.

<comment><USER16> > Kind of like gradually splitting up your giant monster truck Java thing > running all your endpoints into a variety of microservices.

That's a perfectly apt analogy. "Too big to fail = must be killed immediately" is like saying if you have an Java monolith that is a SPOF for your entire business, you must immediately blow up the server running it to protect yourself from the danger of it failing later...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Venezuela has a lot of overseas holdings [1] which, thanks to nationalization, are wholly-owned by the Venezuelan government. Those will be liquidated by creditors.

I've seen arguments that say otherwise, but there is precedent for liquidating the holdings of a government which fails to pay.[2]

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

[2] [http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/10/22/163384810/why-a...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/10/22/163384810/why- a-hedge-fund-seized-an-argentine-navy-ship-in-ghana)

</comment><comment><USER19> "Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice"

The government, especially under Maduro, has done so much dumb stuff that I lean toward the stupidity explanation. The main reason there is no food / goods is they try to set the price hugely under market so no one can supply at that price. Plus a huge bunch of other similar issues.

<comment><USER20> During hyperinflation times, the Brazilian government tried to make illegal to increase prices. Obviously, people and companies could not afford, or refused to, sell at the fixed prices for long. So supermarkets went empty.

Several governments in a row tried the same idea to contain inflation, unsuccessfully. So it is not surprising that, decades later, another government is making the sames mistakes.

<comment><USER21> The United States tried the same thing in the 70s after the Nixon Shock. Same result: shortages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> To Venezuela's credit, things didn't go so well when they tried to default wearly last century.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuela_Crisis_of_1902–190...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuela_Crisis_of_1902–1903)

</comment><comment><USER23> The article is fixated on the economic benefits of default, as if economic decisions were only ever decided by economics! Maduro's government is authoritarian and violently imposed. What internal political factors does this dictatorship think preclude the possibility of default? Would default be signaling weakness to competing forces within the country? Is humiliation on the international stage a threat to the ruling party's self image?

Violent dictatorships are seldom rational.

This article is also written with the tacit acceptance of neoliberal ideology: The only rational choice for an impoverished nation is to submit to foreign capital and governmental institutions and sell the country for the chance to become another dependent market that will bear the brunt of the next global credit crisis and coercive trade deal.

<comment><USER24> > Violent dictatorships are seldom rational.

Well, they're often rational within their own framework (either an ideological framework or merely the framework of violence and power). That looks irrational to the rest of the world, but it has its own logic.

> This article is also written with the tacit acceptance of neoliberal > ideology: The only rational choice for an impoverished nation is to submit > to foreign capital and governmental institutions and sell the country for > the chance to become another dependent market that will bear the brunt of > the next global credit crisis and coercive trade deal.

Will submitting be better or worse than the current situation in Venezuela? If anyone claims that it will be worse, I'd like to see their justification for that statement.

<comment><USER23> > Will submitting be better or worse than the current situation in Venezuela? > If anyone claims that it will be worse, I'd like to see their justification > for that statement.

The current situation is shit. Paths forward should be judged against their alternatives and their possibilities. Global powers love that they can coerce the impoverished into decades-long deals of economic servitude and their ideology pushes it as the only reasonable way forward. Dictatorship and submission to global capitalism aren't the only options.

<comment><USER24> What's your better option?

<comment><USER23> The state of Venezuela could not in any way be justly called representative of the people of Venezuela. I'm an anarchist, i would like to see the abolition of all states but i'm well aware that most people find that unreasonable. At the very least, no solution that involves negotiation between Maduro's dictatorship and their international creditors is a just representation of the interests of the people.

Democratic economic self-determination is alternative possibility. It may work, it may not work, but it's an option that attempts to achieve justice.

<comment><USER24> > The state of Venezuela could not in any way be justly called representative > of the people of Venezuela. [snip] At the very least, no solution that > involves negotiation between Maduro's dictatorship and their international > creditors is a just representation of the interests of the people.

Very, very true.

Unfortunately, there's this group of thugs with guns who run Venezuela, and who aren't going to go away even though the people of Venezuela would like them to. Given that the Maduro "government" _de facto_ exists, and refuses to quit, what should be done?

> Democratic economic self-determination is alternative possibility.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Do you mean letting the people of Venezuela vote on what should be done to rescue their economy? If so, you aren't going to get that, because step one of what needs done is getting the country out of the hands of Maduro and his crew, and Maduro isn't going to let anyone vote on whether that happens (or anything else about the management of the economy).

So far as I can see, any path forward is going to have to coerce Maduro into doing something that is anathema to his ideology. If you've got an alternative that works with the existence of Maduro, I'd love to hear it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> For some reason Venezuela is not a problem anymore in Spain after the last elections. Conservative politicians talking louder each five minutes or so about "all is chaos and flames, crying children and vulcano lava in Venezuela", happily forget venezuelan people suffering in just one night. The theme basically vanished from both newspapers and TV since 26 june.

Perhaps things in Venezuela aren't exactly how some newspapers tell?... Who knows? All I remember for the country is that people were super-nice and the nature was gorgeous.

<comment><USER26> My guess is that Venezuela was a theme during the elections because Maduro's regime has been caught bankrolling Podemos, the anti-establishment socialist party that managed to become the second most-voted party in the last two elections.

<comment><USER25> This statement was succesively dismissed as fake in five occasions by several judges that couldn't find any proof of this. If we trust in what some spanish newspapers said, Podemos was bankrolled by Venezuela, Iran, Venezuela, Bin Laden, Venezuela, North Korea, Fidel Castro, Russia, Venezuela, Spectre and Ronald McDonald.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> When a nation defaults it becomes the IMF/World Bank's bitch. "Austerity" is imposed, well-connected foreign interests get to run roughshod, and that nation is systematically (oh I mean coincidentally) looted. If you ever needed proof that these loans were designed to accomplish precisely that (a way for lenders to extract wealth from those nations), look no further than the fact that here you have an article that seems to be COMPLAINING about how Venezuela is NOT defaulting.

<comment><USER28> Well, if you put it that way, the chavista governments have been doing a tremendous job at looting the country. If defaulting means having the country looted by the IMF and friends, I'm pretty sure the citizens would rather default; I can't recall the last time the IMF ran a country down to food and medicine shortages, so they're not nearly as good at this looting thing as Maduro and his lackeys have proven to be.

<comment><USER16> > I can't recall the last time the IMF ran a country down to food and medicine > shortages

Among the cases where it has been argued that IMF-driven austerity measures did that are Romania in the mid 1980s, Malawi in the early 2000s, and, most recently, Egypt earlier this decade. There are probably others.

<comment><USER29> However, compare to what would have happened in these countries without IMF intervention. That "austerity" is what happens when you run out of credit. That IMF is involved is no proof that IMF "ran down to" something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Venezuela could try [http://qz.com/260980/meet-the-countries-that-dont-use- their-...](http://qz.com/260980/meet-the-countries-that-dont-use-their-own- currency/)

</comment><comment><USER31> Do those making the decision to pay these bonds happen to hold any of these bonds themselves?

<comment><USER32> It's right there:

> _The next argument is something of a conspiracy theory born in part out of > the opaque nature of the country's finances. It posits that close associates > of the administration are major holders of the country's bonds and that the > government fears it'd lose their much-needed support if the payments stopped > coming in. Efforts to obtain comment from government press officials on this > and other aspects of the story were unsuccessful._

<comment><USER33> It's really a pretty good deal for them -- buy the debt for 50 cents on the dollar, and then make the decision to not default, guaranteeing a payout.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> it's insteresting

</comment><comment><USER34> odd</comment>


Mac+ARM: potential perf implications - <AUTHOR> https://ilikecode.wordpress.com/2014/08/11/mac-plus-arm-one-more-thing/

<comment><USER2> Here I thought someone was dispelling the myth that you could exchange a Intel processor with an ARM one and get "like super low energy consumption", and look, "it has the same GHz and much more cores!", and have the same or better performance.

But of course this article instead repeats that flawed idea, right down to the GHz numbers. As it turns out, no, you won't magically beat the leading semiconductor company in the world at their own game using 1/5th of the power.

(In fact, today Intel presented details on their upcoming 14nm process:

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/8367/intels-14nm-technology- in...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/8367/intels-14nm-technology-in-detail)

 _This_ is how you advance power and performance simultaneously)

</comment><comment><USER3> I still think we'll see a hybrid Mac at some point. You'll be able to run apps in either x64 or ARM mode, depending on what performance they require. Apps will be able to delegate tasks to run on the high-performance core or GPU if necessary, or just run entirely in Intel mode if they are a game. For a video editor or photoshop, you can get away with running the majority of the GUI parts on a low-end chip.</comment>


New wonder drug matches and kills all kinds of cancer - <AUTHOR> http://m.nypost.com/p/news/national/testing_starts_creates_homegrown_4jSHWpWFBEkczPTFque7VM

<comment><USER2> I get all of my science news from celeb gossip sites.</comment>


Bitcoin is 10 years old: This is how it began and where it's headed - <AUTHOR> https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/bitcoin-is-ten-years-old-this-is-how-it-began-and-where-its-headed <comment><USER2> Bitcoin Cash is doing another controversial hard fork on November 15th: [https://github.com/bitcoincashorg/bitcoincash.org/blob/maste...](https://github.com/bitcoincashorg/bitcoincash.org/blob/master/spec/2018-nov- upgrade.md)</comment>


A redditor explains how to make readline and bash more user friendly - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/commandline/comments/kbeoe/you_can_make_readline_and_bash_much_more_user/

<comment><USER2> Do we need to mention that it's a redditor? This is a useful resource, so it should be submitted to HN, but the title needs editing.

<comment><USER3> Yes, we do need to mention it, since a lot of HN users have deep, deep biases against the idea that anything good happens on reddit :)

<comment><USER4> It's a funny label to apply. Arguably, all that it really takes to become a redditor is a username, password, and a captcha.

<comment><USER4> I'm being downvoted. Am I wrong? Please let me know rather than punishing me for reasons unknown.

<comment><USER5> I think you are missing the point in your shallow analysis

<comment><USER4> Maybe. Was just pointing that fact out though. I've been on reddit for 4 years now. After the community has grown it just seems a bit naive to refer to it as a little exclusive club of intellectualism, or from an outsider's perspective, a meme graveyard. Just an observation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Those are great, here are a couple more i find very useful:

      # Search for partial matches in bash history
      # so $ <C-p> goes to the previous command but
      #  $ s<C-p> searches through history entries that start with s
      "\C-p":history-search-backward
      "\C-n":history-search-forward

      # add a trailing '/' when tab completing a symlink
      set mark-symlinked-directories on

<comment><USER7> <C-r> searches through entire history backward, with partial match support

<comment><USER8> It seems to have an annoying habit of preserving the index of the last partial match, even if you cancel it. So when you realise you were searching for the wrong substring, cancel and start over, it won't find it because you've now gone past it in the history list.

I'm still not sure of a decent solution to it (apart from using C-s to search history forward instead)

<comment><USER9> It is annoying. Generally happens to me when I "miss" the thing I was searching for and go too far. This is what I do:

        Ctrl + a, Ctrl + k (move to beginning, delete to end), Enter

Going to a new line, resets that index.

I'm sure there is a better way, but its muscle memory for me.

<comment><USER10> ctrl+c should cancel the search, saving you the line-editing workaround.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A lot of cross-posts from Reddit lately. Could this mean Reddit is improving?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, it's just knowing the right subreddits. I found this one via <http://redditdirectory.com/856/Programming>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Or just use oh-my-zsh with the fish theme and get all of this (and more) straight away.

<comment><AUTHOR> That might be true, but where ever you go, there is always bash installed. zsh not so much. Knowing the tools, that you will always find, is a pretty useful skill.

<comment><USER13> If you're going to use a system enough to copy your readline & bash config, it would be just as easy to copy your zsh config and install it in the rare case it's not available.

<comment><USER14> I don't have root on every box I log in to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wow, I was going to ask for a link to the reddit article before realizing that the subreddit was simply heavily themed. I had no idea these settings were flexible and I'm very thankful. Thanks for the cross post and for introducing me to another nice subreddit.</comment>


"Old techies never die, they just can't get hired over 40" - <AUTHOR> http://www.baycitizen.org/technology/story/old-techies-never-die/

<comment><AUTHOR> To me the issue seems to be less "we don't hire you because you're old" and more "we don't hire you because we're not looking for those skills."

<comment><USER2> It can seem that way if you haven't been on the receiving end of these kinds of comments.

For those of us that are somewhat north of 35, it can be a constant struggle to stay relevant in a culture that demands long hours and constant devotion to the company über alles. Once you pick up a wife and maybe some children, companies start to lose interest in you and you find your experience and relevance being downvoted if you ever have to change jobs.

Age discrimination is real and unfortunately, many feel that it's just dandy as long as it never touches anyone you might care about.

<comment><USER3> I have just not seen it, I will give you that it is my own personal experience and my experience may be abnormal, but I am pushing 40, I look 50 and just don't run into this issue. I have kept relevant and have progressed from the early days of the web doing CGI/C -> CGI/Pearl -> ASP/VB -> JSP/Java -> HTML/CSS/JS/REST and now Mobile.

I have a wife and 4 kids and I have never been unemployed for longer than a week and that was between jobs and by choice. I just don't see the discrimination that others talk about. Of my peers, most that started when I did, have left the industry or have chosen to specialize, what I call pasture.

When you choose to specialize there is a risk that comes along with it. Take for example someone that decides to specialize in IOS development solely, at some point the world is going to move on, when it does someone that has choose to specialize has to take it upon themselves to retool before the end of the road. A more relevant example would be a Flash specialist, I see them complaining about the state of things, on the web, all the time, but it is a reality of the market.

It's the reason I have always stayed a generalist. My experience may be abnormal, but among the age group that started in the industry with me, I and one other developer peer are the lone survivors most others where lost due to opting out of the industry or specializing in technologies that died along the way. The two of us that stayed relevant are still going strong.</comment></comment></comment>