What I found interesting about it is that it shows the increasing tendency toward social fragmentation is even affecting France. Robert Putnam noticed this change in 1995 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone). Networks will make the problem (or at least the trend) much worse. My wife and I have a couple friends staying with us at the moment, and it's striking how often all 4 of us are simultaneously sitting using laptops.

Historically this is quite a big change. The last social changes on this scale were probably the ones caused by cars. Though indeed this is partially caused by cars too.

I don't wish to criticize you or your friends, but this is similar to the problem of having multiple TVs in a house. The only solution to this problem is to put the computers away and talk to each other.

In my house we have computers in an office, we have a TV in one room, but we have strict hours for the TV for the kids, we all eat meals together with no books, TV or computers allowed.

BTW I think it would be more healthy if the four of you sat in front of one TV and watched a program together (especially if you laughed at it, talked about it).

I don't think it is exactly like TV. You aren't talking to the TV. You are actually 'talking' when online, just not with your mouth.

My son often asks to 'do letters' on http://starfall.com

I was fixing a bug the other day, and when I said we couldn't do letters, he assertively said "close computer!"

Pretty insightful for a 21 month old.

If he's programming before he's potty-trained, it's all your fault. ;)

He has taken a remarkable interest in robots, so it's a pretty close race at this point.

That is an interesting perspective.

I've always thought of little cafes as France's startup industry. With the tourism and people expecting quaint little local eateries, it would seem that throwing a few tables out in a location where you had an oven and some floorspace would be a good way to bootstrap a little operation.

Perhaps your little eatery grows and you move into a larger space and attract more customers, and so on. Kind of an analogue to what many of us do with a few thousand lines of code on a little server slice somewhere.

I was curious (from my first comment) if anyone else would draw a solid link between French Cafes and startup hackery.

This is not just a French issue (although I live in France and can confirm the very real loss of Cafe life). The BBC is today reporting ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7742539.stm ) on similar issues facing the rural pub in the UK. Once a foundation of any local community - all too often they are boarded up waiting conversion to housing.

There is fragmentation, but social capital also seems to change its manifestation. Communicating with your other friends via Facebook adds to social capital.

What the hell do you think I'm doing all this work for?

If someday I find myself retired but without any French cafés to visit, it'll be like the end of a Twilight Zone episode.

This is an emergency! I need to go to France and bail out the croissant economy!

Not to worry mf.... The problem isn't that French Cafe's are dying. The problem is that the New York Times is dying. They just don't like to talk about that subject in first person singular. Replace "French Cafe" with NYT and you are starting to understand what the article is really about.

Well, I'm pretty sure the article is about the death of cafes in France. But in any case, the much-predicted death of the NYT isn't something I'm looking forward too, either.

The guidelines say: "What to Submit: [...] "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

If you wanted to stretch the article to hacker/startup-related topics:

- The eroding economy means that more people are spending time at home, to the extent that communal watering holes are closing. Hence, there is a need for newer, cheaper ways for communities to interact.

- If the trend crosses the ocean, we may see closing coffeeshops, which serve as a gathering place for many hackers and entrepreneurial types.

(And it would seem PG is uniquely situated to define what does and doesn't relate to Hacker News... :) )

I spend nearly everyday in a cafe doing part of my work. I really enjoy the time sucking down a coffee and people watching when I'm not hacking.

It has stayed busy here, I couldn't even find a table when I came in for lunch the other day. I don't know what this means about the local economy, but I would be sad if this place disappeared.

OK, so then you've pretty much satisfied my worry that there was some insanely obvious hackerish news in this post and verified that it is merely interesting on some obscure level.

Thanks.

Truly. I think we should ban the submitter, he clearly has no understanding of the way this site is supposed to work.

or we could ban you, just for advocating banning someone who submitted an article you were offended by

or we could ban you, for not getting the (admittedly not very funny) joke I was making :-)

According to a program I heard years ago on public radio, if you sit outdoors at a French café in Madrid, Spain long enough, eventually everyone you've ever met will walk by.

Will this happen in roughly more, less, or the same amount of time it would take all the typewriter monkeys to produce the works of Shakespeare?

(just need to know how long after I arrive I should book my return flight)

I believe Usenet disproved the infinite monkeys theory.

No, the study was flawed. It turns out that there were very few actual monkeys on usenet. It was mostly just humans pretending to be monkeys. The delicate monkey sensitivities were too easily offended by all of the asshatery.

The 'bad' off topic articles are the ones that set off the endless, dreary, predictable debates about politics or economics. Stuff like this is easy to ignore if it doesn't happen to interest you, and isn't likely going to attract argumentative bozos, with little interest in hacking or involvement in startups, to the site.