[HN Gopher] A Coder in Courierland (2005)
___________________________________________________________________
A Coder in Courierland (2005)
Author : keiferski
Score : 39 points
Date : 2023-05-29 12:31 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (web.archive.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (web.archive.org)
| lkbm wrote:
| > And what exactly does a bike courier spend all this time
| carting from Alpha to Beta?. Undramatically, it is mostly just
| legal documents and cheques. I fear that once average people get
| more comfortable with internet encryption, courier companies will
| go out of business.
|
| Any data on how this has panned out? I'd imagine that it has
| declined a lot, but sometimes you still do just need to deliver a
| physical document.
|
| One thing that occasionally stands out to me in Agatha Christie
| novels is that London had twice-daily mail delivery in the early-
| to-mid 1900s. You'd post a letter in the morning and it would
| arrive in the evening. It wouldn't replace the "we need this
| across town in an hour", but it's always been interesting to me
| that delivery service downsized when telephones became
| commonplace. It would make sense for courier services to do the
| same with email, the web, and SSL.
| NikkiA wrote:
| When I lived in Hatfield briefly in the 1980s, we had thrice-
| daily post delivery, 9am, noon and 9pm. I imagine it was an
| artifact of de Havilland's influence.
| colanderman wrote:
| When I was growing up in Rhode Island in the 90s we had twice-
| daily _newspaper_ delivery.
| ido wrote:
| While you'd expect the documents to be digital these, there's a
| lot more delivery of food and consumer products bought online
| than there was in 2005.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _A Coder in Courierland_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=268768 - Aug 2008 (29
| comments)
| jazzido wrote:
| Haven't thought of Kuro5hin for years. Man, the memories. What a
| great site.
| hcs wrote:
| Great read!
|
| > Gibson and Stephenson had taught me that the messenger, the
| mailman, was a vital romantic figure.
|
| It seemed weird to me that both Snow Crash and Virtual Light had
| main characters who were couriers. When I read Virtual Light I
| thought "oh, so this is what Snow Crash was parodying," but nope,
| it came out a year later. I didn't grow up in a city so that job
| was something I only encountered in fiction (aside from pizza and
| Chinese delivery).
| marttt wrote:
| The comments for the parent article included an excellent
| longread on bike messenger culture in Boston:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20050314012405/http://www.bikesu...
|
| Also, that early 2000s internet was indeed a fine place to be
| in. Simple pages with well-crafted long-form, using Verdana --
| what more do you need.
| scubbo wrote:
| > I think I may be the only courier who even knows what PHB
| means.
|
| Player's Handbook? ;)
|
| (Yes, I know they mean the Scott Adams creation)
| sychou wrote:
| I was expecting a tale of using Courier for a programming font.
| Torwald wrote:
| Yeah, me too. I hoped for a killer-reason to switch to Courier
| with a smug sense of superiority.
| ido wrote:
| I remember reading this great entry when it came up almost 20
| years ago! Still a good read, despite some of the details having
| since went out of date.
| juujian wrote:
| > once you've learned your chops you should be up in the $10 -
| $12CAD
|
| I forgot about the (2005). That is below the (very low) current
| minimum wage of $16.55 CAD in Ontario. And that minimum wage is
| not sufficient to survive in Toronto. Wouldn't be surprised if
| couriers were paid minimum wage today, or maybe a dollar or two
| over. Seems to be the trend for 'manual labor'.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-05-29 23:01 UTC)