The Parachute Generation | Hacker News Reader

The Parachute Generation

nytimes.com

110 pointskercker89 comments

My Masters program was about 80% Chinese nationals. I became friends with a few of them despite the language barrier. I like hanging out with people from other countries because it's a very cheap way to vacation at home.

'A' was a guy, about 23 years old, not very talented as a programmer, though there were some great ones in the group. He did not understand that plagarism was wrong. He would copy paste wikipedia and I'd point out that that was not allowed and he handed it in anyway and the teacher would read him the riot act. I think he got a C anyway. He had an idealistic worship of American culture and really wanted to be friends, but his personality was as bland as can be. Guy went to an all boys school in China and so he said one of the main reason he picked school X was that there were a lot of women there and his TOEFL scores were good enough for them to let him in.

'B' was a very upbeat and enthusiastic young lady who would always wear hats that said "Genius" is Chinese. Lots of energy, always got projects done on time. Told me she took a semester off to have a baby. I was thinking, "wow, that's odd, a very career focused ambitious woman having a baby in her early 20s". Then I thought the politically incorrect thought (downvotes!) that this was an anchor baby, except not the penniless economic refugee type. Ahh good for her, I think she'll be a great addition to our country.

Early babies are also a culture thing. In China as soon as you get married you are expected to have a kid, and that you will go back to work soon and that your grandparents will help a lot.

did you mean your grandparents or your child's grandparents? i'm just imagining my grandpa helping out with my first born, (my grandma was dead at that point, my grandpa wasn't far behind), and it seems like maybe a bit much.

Remember that if everyone has children in their early 20s, the kid's greatgrandparents will only be in their late 60s/early 70s.

Sorry, started speaking from the child's perspective. Yes, your parents. Children's grandparents.

China's come off of very harsh legal constraints on childbearing.

  Korbin’s Chinese housemate, Oscar, spent several thousand dollars
  on a laptop so powerful that it blew out the fuses in their host
  family’s house.

I was fairly engrossed in the story, until that sentence. The jarring hyperbole of "a laptop so powerful that it blew the fuses" - it makes me question how much of the rest of the story is poetic licence.

You can certainly do that with a PC, especially on a circuit with already a lot of load on it. one of those 10-20lb laptops with docking station + multiple monitors?

seems possible to me

  "especially on a circuit with already a lot of load on it"

That's basically my point: sure, plugging something in can blow a fuse, but either the device is faulty, the circuit itself is faulty, or the circuit is already near capacity.

If it's a laptop, a docking station, speakers, multiple monitors, all plugged into a socket extension, plugged into a single outlet - even then, I wouldn't expect it to trip the fuse unless the circuit was already well on the way to overload.

If a circuit is so close to overload, it could be tripped simply by plugging in a phone charger, so the super-expensive mega-powerful laptop isn't really relevant.

i see your point, a laptop or computer alone is not likely to trip a fuse, but when you got a 20 amp capacity and you plug in a 5 amp laptop system, thats meaningful.

after buying a new alien ware, I tripped a fuse that wasn't tripped in years with a 'normal pc'. one could argue it wasn't the pc's fault, as there was a lot of stuff on that circuit, but one could also just as easily say the opposite.

Not just as easily, since it's virtually impossible for any laptop made today to trip a properly working and average in every way circuit.

in the US it's typical for the circuits to be 15A and shared capacity within a room or two.

Maybe it was that Eurocom 12 core Xeon two power adapter having laptop.

For what it's worth, I had to draw two dedicated electrical circuits up to my home office because my custom PC was simply too much load on its own, let alone the four monitors and assorted other equipment I have.

Granted, my computer is about $10,000 of hardware with four GPUs; my point is that I'm not sure it's poetic license. You can definitely build a computer, even a custom laptop, that would at least strain typical circuits and maybe trip them with other peripherals attached.

I dunno, a standard residential US circuit is max 15A at 120V, or 1800W. A GTX980 is 165W and the highest powered Xeon I could find was 165W. A Xeon + 4 GPUs + power supply loss comes to around 1050W and between the motherboard, RAM, SSDs, HDDs, monitors, speakers, cooling and such I'm sure you can push it high enough that it causes issues but I really can't see that coming from a laptop, even with peripherals.

If you can plug in a hairdryer or space heater or vacuum cleaner, it'll run any single-mobo desktop I can think of without issue. Pretty much every US dwelling is set up to handle those on most of the outlets (1200-1800 watts typically). 2000 watts is a LOT. Laptop, no freaking way. Consider even just the heat dissipation.

The odds of tripping a circuit-breaker with a phone charger are near zero; the odds of tripping a circuit-breaker or fuse with a vacuum or electric heater are excellent. I live with weak circuits, and only those two items that can be "the last straw," here. (OK, maybe an older, honking PC I used to own.) For a laptop to be in that sort of range is pretty darn impressive. Something that won't happen again, as CPU and GPU circuits and voltage are now shrinking.

I don't know what's going on here, but my old Mac Pro would always trip the AFCI circuit breaker when I turned it on, even with little else on the circuit. It must have been taking a big gulp of power that resembled an arc-fault. Perhaps some laptop power supplies could also have weird characteristics that trip such a breaker even without exceeding the current threshold, and be interpreted in storytelling as "blowing out the fuses."

The GFCI is not a circuit breaker. It measures the difference between the current going in and the current going out over the hot and neutral wire. If it's faulting either the circuit is faulty (your Pc) or the GFCI is faulty. If the current isn't flowing back out through neutral it means it's going directly to ground or it's going through a human, to ground.

The current threshold is 50mA

This wasn't a GFCI, but an AFCI. According to Wikipedia, AFCI's "detect electrical current alternating at characteristic frequencies, usually around 100 kHz, known to be associated with wire arcing, which are sustained for more than a few milliseconds." I suppose the Mac Pro's power supply produced some of these indicators, since all was well on a non-AFCI circuit. I've heard other people having similar false positives with equipment on AFCI-protected circuits.

Many isolated flyback AC/DC converters run around the 100kHz mark, so probably on the right track there.

My Airocide (air purifier) would trip the bathroom outlet on turn-on at a place I lived. Never figured out why, but I thought that the thing was broken when I first got it.

Oh, thanks for clarifying I thought an AFCI=GFCI=RCD=RCCB.

Well, a GFCI (elsewhere known as RCCB, residual-current circuit breaker) is a circuit breaker in the very literal sense that it breaks the circuit when it detects a current leak.

But it's not exactly a fuse: if all current goes where current is supposed to go, a ground defect circuit breaker does nothing.

About the previous post: that ""a laptop so powerful that it blew the fuses"" is rubbish. Even a powerful laptop doesn't eat so much current that it would blow a fuse - unless the circuit is already nearly overloaded, in which case even the slightest power consumption may blow the fuse, and that tells nothing about the power consumption of the laptop.

(Used to have a kitchen where the tumble drier had to be turned off if you wanted to use the microwave or a tea kettle.)

In most jurisdictions you wouldn't be able to build the house in such a way that such obviously-used-at-the-same-time devices would end up on the same circuit. Source: Am about to be the client of an electrical contractor due to a remodel that has to be done to code.

You can't build a new house that way. I've lived in some very old places where the underlying electrical system is absolutely terrifying, i.e. AC wires wrapped in waxed paper.

I also believe the poster is in the UK. Older homes use a ring system where the breaker is at each outlet and there is one main breaker for the entire house, there is no breaker panel in the American/European sense.

Yes, I had those waxed paper insulated wires. You really don't want to touch them. This was in Finland, and the house was built by a refugee family at a time when building materials were difficult to get. It was in fact surprisingly good, but still the original electric works plus 50 years of DYI maintenance produced some interesting results, like disintegrating insulations and ground wires not connected to anything. The woodworks of the house were very good but fixing the electricity, heating and plumbing was hopeless.

Yes, you can't do that here either, not since 1960's. This house was built in 1948 and the whole electric system was behind a single 230 V phase with a 25 A main fuse. The kitchen was behind one 10 A fuse, except for the stove which was behind a 16 A fuse. Amazingly, I never blew up the main fuse.

(It was a nice house in many ways but I realised that fixing everything would cost too much, so I built a new one next to it and demolished the old one.)

If you're in an older house built when appliances were not as numerous, and has not been updated, this is easy to do.

The fact that they mention "fuses" may be innocent ignorance, or maybe the house really was served by fuses.

Even in my ex-house built in 1964, we would often pop breakers if the wrong combination of stuff was turned on in the wrong combination of outlets.

I thought the exact same thing, and then I noticed several such poetic instances which I doubted to be real.

It's all poetic license 'till you're the one who experiences time slowing as the arc of light and flash punctuate your merely plugging something in. (This for a short circuit causes by ancient insulation inside a device making the cover "hot.")

Remember that the US is 110 v so a has less capacity to the 240v or the hosts house wiring was old.

240 is also on the low side. I would prefer 480 to keep the amps on the low side. Buuut that is what happens when nobody future proofs fundamental standards.

You would prefer 480V available at the standard household socket outlet? Sorry, but that's ridiculous. 480V is dangerous to have in a home outlet, and totally unnecessary. A typical 230V/20A power circuit can deliver 4.6kW. How many household appliances do you have that need more than that?

Power cable is cheap. 230V/20A is a good tradeoff between safety, cost and power handling capability and is entirely "future proof"

Dont know about you, but my college off-campus landlords were shitbirds who wouldn't spend a penny they didn't have too. Your 10 amp circuit from 1910 that is illegally worked to 4 rooms can certainly be blown by a laptop.

This is, what looks like, new-ish construction is small-town Michigan. Unless the builder was grossly negligent, it's likely to have a 100 or 200A amp service panel, and 15A circuit breakers (not fuses) distributed according to code.

A, no way 1500W is going into a laptop, even temporarily with a surge. That's crazy.

B, no decent manufacturer builds a 1.5kW supply and doesn't have reasonable PF and turn on protections.

C, The kid probably has a fridge or something, its pump kicks on, laptop turns on, trips breaker. "Ha ha, laptop is so powerful it blows breaker", etc.

I agree that it's unlikely but it is kinda possible. This laptop https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/01/acer-21x-nvidia-1080... is rated to draw up to 5 amps @ 120V, so a significant fraction of a 12-amp circuit's limit.

I'd not be putting something that draws 600W on my lap.

There is gold in being a host family. $1800 a month. Or more. Paid by the School.

Little old ladies with an extra bedroom hosting a young Chinese boy. Often when they turn driving age I see them in a new car.

Over 200 are enrolled at the regional college prep Catholic school

Host families are a secret way to make good money.

EDIT: its not airbnb-esque. You don't hand over a key. They are children. Hosts can't go away for the weekend. They provide / cook meals or shop or take student to the store for their own food.

How do I become a host family?

Call the school??

What I'm familiar with is the church newsletter (or diocese) asks for interested families to be hosts.

Two academic workers at the school are hosts. Plus the reitred lady I mentioned. After one graduated another comes right behind .

Many hosts are alums too.

$1800/month to host a foreign kid while they're in school? That sounds unlikely and dubious, maybe 1/3 of that amount is more realistic.

But if it were true, poorer families who are struggling financially should be made aware of this, you'd have millions sign up to host. It'd likely be a good cultural experience for both sides too.

Certainly not all, but catholic prep schools can have tuitions of $30,000+ in some cases so in that case the numbers are reasonable as a passthrough to the foreign parents.

I talked to the lady. It's true. Her property taxes are $18k and could not afford to live in her house. When she bought it decades ago taxes were <$900

The Chinese spend the money and the Catholic school churns out ivy and first flight college acceptance letters.

The school packages everything for the Chinese families. My $1800 is a 2-3 year old number and low if I had to guess.

Tuition for a primary grade is over $10k. So it's private money and lots of it. What a better way to spend your fortune on educating your offspring.

Well-off families will pay $20k to put their kid in private kindergarten. That's per year per kid and at a local private school, not sending them internationally. And that's kindergarten! Grades 5-12 can be $30k or more in tuition per year.

>"But if it were true, poorer families who are struggling financially should be made aware of this, you'd have millions sign up to host. It'd likely be a good cultural experience for both sides too."

As much as it'd "help" the poor family, I don't think you'd get a whole lot of interest from the other side. If people have this much money to spend on their children's tuition, they certainly don't want them living in poor neighborhoods, for the "cultural experience", even.

In other places, it can be $800/$900 a month.

This isn't new, it has been going on for over a decade or more. And it's not necessarily just Chinese kids. Korean kids, Japanese kids, European kids even. My family did it in Canada.

$1800/m actually seems low to me. For the amount of money that Chinese parents pay on education, it's not much.

Please don't become a host family if all you're looking for is profits.

I volunteer for AFS (a global not-for-profit cultural exchange organisation) in the UK, and here the norm is that host families are paid. As a deal to restart AFS in the UK after having closed down, AFS International had us partner with a company that specialises in receiving foreign students; they handle the sourcing of host families (who are paid around £120 per week for "subsidy") and we handle orientations, ensuring that they settle into UK life well. And I have heard of so many horror stories where 4 exchange students live in the same house (Ideally there should be only one, to ensure they don't hang around with other exchange students only), being given frozen food (or sometimes even no food at all) or just generally neglected by the host family. And those are mainly families who treat hosting a student as another form of income.

If you have no intention to engage with the host students to give them experience and only intend to look at them like cash cows, please, for the love of god, DO NOT become a host family. You will ruin a student's year.

Watching my own children go through the education system here in the UK I have noticed how much more of a qualification system it is compared to when I was at school/college in the 1970's & 1980's. Education seems to be something you try to get along the way to qualifications.

I went to school in the UK in the 70's/80's and it was shit, I'd have given my right arm for what my children have had (from a state school).

Agreed. Any success I have achieved in life has been despite my British state education, not because of it!

>Education seems to be something you try to get along the way to qualifications.

Which then mean much much less than what they did in the 70s and 80s (due to "qualifications inflation").

And even the best of them (Phds and the like) can leave you with no job prospects.

I went through my education in the UK starting at the age of five in 1960 and I think it is important to remember that education then varied dramatically from place to place.

When I describe the schools that I attended many of my acquaintances from other parts of the country react with surprise that my schools were all comprehensives yet had strict discipline (though not obsessed with uniform minutiae as many seem to be now), a strong work ethic, a lot of after school activities, etc., and they encouraged us to be ambitious and creative. Many of my acquaintances in contrast describe schools of the time that were just as bad as any horror story you see in the Daily Mail today.

My only knowledge of UK schools now is from the UK online press and if I didn't constantly remind myself that schools are not all the same I might easily believe their sweeping generalisations. Edit: lived in Norway for the last thirty years and all my children went to Norwegian schools.

I may be lucky. My daughter is in a bog "bog standard" comprehensive in East London and loving it. The school really seems to like kids and has this nice balance between pushing for attainment and growing the whole person. So yes, she's doing well in classes but has also discovered a passion for playing drums, astronomy, Duke of Edinburgh Awards etc.

The head teacher says very plainly "I don't want to be the CEO of an Academy, I want to be a headteacher". I hope he, and the people like him manage to survive the changing system.

> The head teacher says very plainly "I don't want to be the CEO of an Academy, I want to be a headteacher".

When you say you hope he survives the changing system, I hope he realises he can do so by being the headmaster of an academy.

I mean, smart CEOs worry about making enough money to invest in developing the product right? The 'product' of an academy is educated children (or adults, I suppose, if they stay through the sixth form) - so what's the problem?

The academy system just gives the head/governors more control to do what's right for that particular school.

Sure, some schools are so templated that there's little benefit to be had, but many are unique in a way in which those familiar with the school can manage better without having to abide by national or regional policies that aren't the best fit.

You do realise that 'regional authority' in this case is the local council? Being An academy doesn't remove most curriculum requirements.

What it does do is allow fiscal autonomy and freedom from a bad local authority.

However where the school is working with a good local authority, there are very few advantages. Indeed staying in LA control provides tremendous advantages in terms of pooling of resources - IT support, curriculum support, HR and finance for example.

In this case the LA is well managed and supportive. Splitting away offers few benefits.

You say the 'product' is smart kids. The product of many academies is actually kids who score highly in metrics that can be measured, but don't have a great all-round education. Oh, and a big shiny car for the CEO.

It seems like what these parents really want for their kids is enculturation, but they don't realise it. A western education on its own is still rather limiting when it comes to career and life success.

> but they don't realise it.

it's hilarious you think that people who send their teenage kids to live overseas indefinitely and pay $40k/year for a basic high school education "don't realize" what they're doing.

No, this is often about having a working exit strategy. Similar things happen in many countries right now, usually by getting a/the pregnant wife into the country, getting citizenship for the child and thus at least residency rights for both parents. Also moving assets continouosly out of China to safer countries. Obviously this is all very expensive, since they need to do it without the state noticing, ie. lots of bribing.

That seems pretty implausible that this is happening in many countries. Only 30 countries on earth have birthright citizenship the way you describe. Of those 30 only the US and Canada are developed nations. The rest are countries like: Mexico, Fiji, and Guatemala.

In most European countries it's much easier to get citizenship if a) stayed a while and b) gave birth to a child. Similarly it's easier for the other parent to get citizenship or permanent residence under these conditions. But yeah, I didn't describe it very accurately. From what people told me the US is/was one of the prime targets, will be interesting to see if that changes with Trump. Perhaps more come to Europe instead.

Hey, Australia is developed nation as well! Maybe not as much as Canada, but more than Mexico or the USA.

Australia does not have birthright citizenship. I looked it up when we were living in Sydney, and my wife was pregnant.

Interesting, you now have to live in Australia until you're 10. That didn't used to be the case. Thanks.

Anchor babies don't let parents stay in the US. The government will happily deport the foreign parents and the US child to stay with the parents. The anchor baby can eventually bring their parents over, but its a 21 year wait.

https://www.uscis.gov/family/family-us-citizens/parents/brin...

You seem to be unaware of DAPA.

And even in cases without DAPA eligibility, a USA-born child would not be "deported" in your scenario.

I was unaware of it, but reading through the wikipedia summary, its a recently(less than 10 years) passed law, that has been tied up in the courts for most of its possible existence? I agree that if it passes through the judiciary intact, then it changes things. Currently however, what people would call anchor babies do not provide the benefit most people would think exists

There's even a mandarin romcom around that plot. 'Finding Mr Right' I think.

So my parents sent my sister to a private boarding school in the UK(we're not from UK), paying more than $40k/year for the privilege, and the be honest with you, they didn't know exactly what to expect. For them, it was just getting her the best possible opportunity in life, the connections and the ability to go to any university she would like to after. But they genuinely had no idea how the British education system works. I would say it was a huge gamble as well, since we are definitely not millionaires and sending her to that school consumed 100% of their disposable income, without any guarantee it would result in what they hoped it would.

I would say my sister has gained tremendously from attending that school, but in a way, apart from knowing that school X is the best school in the country, my parents really "didn't realise" what they were doing, in a sense. So it's no surprise to me that Chinese parents sending their kids to US "don't realise what they are doing" - they just want to give their kids the best chance in life.

Did you read the article? It opens with a story is about a guy sending his 16-year-old son to Oxford because he likes the sound of a degree from there. Not Oxford in the UK. Oxford MI, which is a village in a rural area north of Detroit.

I'm from Michigan and I have a hard time believing that this guy knows what he's doing. Oxford HS isn't even in the top 100 high schools in Michigan:

http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/michigan/r...

Even were the school excellent, I don't think a village of 3,500 people is the best place for a foreign student to get American acculturation. In the 10k town I lived in for a while, the exchange students really struggled compared with the ones where I lived later, in a near-city suburban area. There was a lot more for them to do, the average resident was more broad-minded, and there was a greater variety of people for them to meet.

not sure if they had it in mind, but immigrant coming through a struggling school outside of Detroit has a good story behind it. And you have to admit, after scanning thousands of applications Oxford will draw your attention even if for a second. Good SEO

Then he can go to the Michigan Institute of Technology and put MIT on his résumé?

The guy ended up going to Pen State after he finished HS. So I would say it worked out pretty well, regardless of above sarcasm.

Also a business model of http://berkeleycollege.edu and a few others.

True, but about that same guy, the author later says:

"His father insisted that this wasn’t just about family prestige or future job prospects. “I also want my son to understand, in a way that I never could,” he said, “that the world is bigger than Shenyang, bigger than China.”

There are lot of Chinese kids in my UK town local public schools (ie private schools one of which Obahmas roomies at Harvard attended ) for this very reason.

> Even were the school excellent, I don't think a village of 3,500 people is the best place for a foreign student to get American acculturation.

I'd say the opposite, actually.

If they were sent to a bigger city, it'd be possible to live a completely Chinese life in America: Chinese friends, Chinese food, Chinese teachers, Chinese everything.

Also, I think exposing kids to the diversity of the American landscape is valuable. So many international students think America is all NYC and LA before they arrive and realize that's actually only a tiny segment of the country.

I'm pretty sure there are things in between a village and one of the few cities with a Chinese community so large and concentrated that someone can live a completely Chinese life.

>It seems like what these parents really want for their kids is enculturation, but they don't realise it. A western education on its own is still rather limiting when it comes to career and life success.

You'd be surprised. Those asian kids will do far better than university and job-wise than most american ones in the same high schools -- because of sheer determination (and parental pressure).

As for life success, that's not guaranteed even if you are a millionaire, so it's a moot point.

Non-mobile link: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/magazine/the-parachute-ge...

Anyone know examples of major companies providing these services with URLs to their websites?

It's fine if there in English, Chinese, etc.

I work for a related company in the industry, based in Shanghai. Would be happy to chat/answer any questions about the work.

Mainly just interested in seeing a few notable companies real online marketing materials.

this has been happening since the 90s. there were at least 2 or 3 of these kids at my high school in california.

Although not in as organized of a way

People tend to organize over time. Moreover, this is a strong side of capitalism - where there's lots of demand for something, eventually someone will start offering it as a service, in exchange for money.

looks like Trump university might get a second wind.

Western countries are the best on earth

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