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Dreaming of Digital Glory At Hacker Hostels
An anonymous reader writes "The NY Times has a story about a small chain of managed residences that has sprung up in the Bay Area to provide a cheap place where programmers, designers, and scientists can live and work. These 'hacker hostels' are a place for aspiring entrepreneurs to gather, share, and refine ideas. 'Hackers ... have long crammed into odd or tiny spaces and worked together to solve problems. In the 1960s, researchers at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory slept in the attic and, while waiting for their turn on the shared mainframe computer, sweated in the basement sauna. When told about the hacker hostels, Ethan Mollick, an assistant professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania who studies entrepreneurship, said they reminded him of his days in the last decade studying at M.I.T., where graduate students would have bunk beds inside their small offices.'"
.. at state prison!
FTA:
"But many tenants are here not so much for the cheap rent — $40 a night — as for the camaraderie and idea-swapping."
$40/night * 30 days (month~) == $1200/month
Well, I guess it is San Francisco.. so maybe that's cheap for them.
Hackers — the Mark Zuckerberg variety, not the identity thieves — have long crammed into odd or tiny spaces and worked together to solve problems.
Wait, Mark Zuck is not an identity thief?
Maybe the hackers crammed into this hostel can work on some sort of global information sharing system that would allow them to collaborate without being in the same physical location.
"But inside, in a third-floor apartment, there are enough Ikea bunk beds to sleep 10 people, crammed into two bedrooms." And they mention that the house "captain" gets his/her own room, meaning you have 11 people in a single apartment.
This violates so many different housing codes, it's not even funny. Cramming that many people into such a small space is downright dangerous. Fire, sanitation, etc., ... all problems. These are not niggling little "lets find something to fine you for" issues... this is a serious safety problem.
"Katy Levinson, who runs another hacker house, declined to give its exact location because she had heard about several houses being shut down after running into trouble with landlords."
She doesn't even OWN the house? That tells me two things:
1) She's badly violating the terms of any lease agreement, which certainly would not allow subletting of this magnitude.
2) She's utterly ignoring any landlord-tenant laws herself.
. . . sounds like a perfect description of cubicles to me. Smart parents might want to prepare their children early for cubicle life, to give them a head start before the neighbors' children:
How about cubicle cribs for babies, and cubicle summer camps? They'll be better prepared for life in their cubicle future!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Dear god, as a female I would see this as a nightmare. I already have to set and constantly re-establish boundaries with the male-dominated work force that I'm in (physics, specifically). I would not want to sleep anywhere near them. I would not want to be stuck cleaning up after them all because my preferred standards of cleanliness are much higher than theirs.
This is part of why women don't join these fields in parity with men. We can't afford to completely dissolve boundaries like this, because some creep will make it a huge problem for us (even if there's only one creep in dozens). Honestly, since men are more likely to be victims of crime, I don't really see why y'all want to completely give up any privacy either. You do know you ain't getting any with a living situation like that, right?
It reminds me of a science conference I went to. My lab was paying for me to attend, and there were no huge budget issues to worry about. However, the conference organizer decided it would be a jolly good bonding experience to assign everyone random room mates at the conference hotel! This was a group of people who had, by and large, never met each other before, with an international set of attendees. I am happy, happy to socialize with Indian scientists and French scientists and Chinese scientists and American scientists and all the rest. I am not happy to give these same scientists access to my wallet while I sleep, or to my bed, or to my luggage (meager though it may be). They have no serious motivation to be a good room mate because they will likely never see me again. I refused to share my room with some total stranger and the guys in charge thought I was a complete nutter for it.
These are not so different from crowded apartments that cater to immigrants.
Exactly.
The US is in the process of reducing living standards to the level of Shenzen. Already the 40 hour week is a memory. Then there's the "internship" work-for-free racket. Now, overcrowded dorms. Public housing projects provided more living space per person than that. Even SRO hotels rent you an individual room.
This is pathetic.