Hacker News Reader

Comment by dcow | Hacker News Reader

I don't think your argument supports the second conclusion in your penultimate sentence. Seems like a big leap. Power and water “just work” and the utility companies can’t abuse people. As an “end user” I don't get crappier power or worse water because my neighbor is spooked out by smart meters. I highly doubt the savings would be passed on to me anyway. I would 1000 times over rather live in a world where internet utility service providers were required to substantiate service terminations the details of which are governed by civil law not by an abusive EULA written to protect tue company not the user. If it means email costs $1/month so be it. I pay for email on principle anyway.

View on HN

Then isn't this an argument that tech companies are not utilities because the things they supply don't "just work" and have no nuance to them?

Electricity and water "just work" because you deliver it, you're done. You have no obligations aside from not failing to deliver it, and not exploiting your monopoly market.

Tech companies are not utilities because they're not just something you buy like a commodity and have a right to not have complex terms of usage?

You want the best of both worlds. Maybe that's not possible.

Bullshit. Delivering power and water are incredibly complex. Water has to be sourced from God knows where, you have to do planning on building reservoirs. You have to manage run off (hey, your horses can't keep shitting near that stream!). You have to treat the water and manage it's acidity. You have to keep mains running. If a leak springs and the system goes under pressure, the whole supply can become contaminated! So now you have to notify your users that they need to BOIL THEIR WATER! you have to detect leaks in the last mile of delivery so that you can protect the system. You have to keep your pumps from getting flooded. You have to manage subsidy programs and different user classes. You have to integrate with federal and state water authorities.

Utilities are complicated. There's no such thing as delivering and not failing to deliver.

Nothing gives away a software engineer with no experience then when they look at physical infrastructure and declare "that's easy to do".

This is the profession where getting an SOE imaged machine in a new employees hands on their first day is considered a big achievement.

Somewhere on the net in some parallel forum, water and electric utility workers are talking about how simple running twitter must be.

> How hard can it be? If a ethernet cable fails it's not as though it will electrocute the worker or flood a town downstream.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com