Americans don't need fast home Internet service, FCC suggests - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/08/maybe-americans-dont-need-fast-home-internet-service-fcc-suggests/?comments=1 <comment><USER2> I was recently fortunate enough to upgrade to 1Gb symmetrical fiber. I can say that it is absolutely fantastic. You really can do things you never did before:

1\. I can host time-machine backups for my entire family on my home server, allow them to have off-site backups.

2\. I can provide openVPN service for my entire family when they're outside of the home. I can also browse full-time on my own openVPN client at full-speed.

3\. I can seed legitimate torrents for far, far longer than I normally would. For example, new Ubuntu releases.

4\. I "donate" some of my bandwidth to other people and projects, allowing them to host files from my home.

5\. I can test and host my own websites/services from my house. If it gets a little traction it won't destroy my entire internet.

These are all things that simply were not possible when I was with Comcast, with only 10 Mb/s upload and bandwidth caps. If we completely deregulate internet I'm afraid they will be impossible for most everyone.

<comment><USER3> I think the largest difference for me is in QoS, not in bandwidth. I generally use 802.11ac so I'm capped at 450mbps of the ~1000 available.

The service is always on, it's always stable, there's no weird routing or congestion latency at peak hours, it's just... functional.

That's what's miraculous about it to me - basically never needing to reset the router or reconfigure things. Internet as reliable as electricity. I literally don't even think about it.

Also the total cost difference is $45 a month for a far more satisfying experience.

<comment><USER4> > I generally use 802.11ac so I'm capped at 450mbps of the ~1000 available.

How come? I generally get between 800-1200Mbps on 802.11ac, real, measured speed with iPerf3.

<comment><USER2> What wifi router do you use? Also, do you use custom firmware?

<comment><USER4> I use Mikrotik access points: [https://routerboard.com](https://routerboard.com)

I use several models, check out the dual concurrent triple chain ones like: [https://mikrotik.com/product/RB962UiGS-5HacT2HnT](https://mikrotik.com/product/RB962UiGS-5HacT2HnT)

I wrote a little bit about my set-up here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14743866](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14743866)

> Also, do you use custom firmware?

No, just standard Mikrotik firmware.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the reference, I picked one up to play with :) I used to hack on a grotty old cisco router for my home network but it's been ~15 years since that was relevant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We didn't _need_ anything faster than dial-up for the web of 1999.

It's all the things yet unimagined that ubiquitous high speed internet would enable that's the real tragedy here.

The complete failure of imagination of today's "leaders" is very disheartening.

<comment><USER6> This is an excellent point. The FCC's shameful cowing to ISPs has a huge opportunity cost to consumers.

Greater connectivity creates new business opportunities. Uber would be impossible without smartphones and reliable data. Netflix would be a DVD company without high-speed home internet.

When the FCC tells us we "don't need" better internet, it forecloses whole new categories of businesses.

<comment><USER7> Re: Uber, the US has more wireless broadband subscriptions per capita, according to the OECD, than anyone but Japan and Finland (basically tied with Sweden). Re: Netflix, we just broke into the top 10 on Akamai's ranking of average connection speed. On both metrics, we blow away the other big Western democracies (the U.K., France, and Germany).

<comment><USER8> I question the utility of average here. If I have a single gigabit user, I can dwarf a whole lot of 2-3 megabit connections. Good that we're ahead, but medians would be helpful here to give a better picture. Hopefully Akamai dealt with this somehow in their methodology.

<comment><USER9> I agree with you that a /median/ average is more illustrative of the progress than a /mode/ average.

However even better would be an actual /map/ showing you by area of ISP service, the fastest speeds (down and up) that an ISP is willing to attempt* (believe in a normal case they have a reasonable chance of success) to provide.

Then from that map, weighted by population density, reaching qualitative conclusions; such as mode average based on population, or the cutoffs at 20 and 80% of the population.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The internet innovation spirit in the US is high but the companies in charge, and oversight, are on the milk it train.

Cable and broadband companies were massively innovating in the 90s and early 2000s, now they are focusing on their 'innovation' on pricing and milking it by: slowing things down, data capping it, lobbying for more monopoly control, trying to get access to your private info and constant pricing games. All of these actions are due to lack of product innovation and to make up for lost revenues of not just increasing capacity and speeds thus offering a better product people will pay more for.

All we can hope for is another disruptive network innovation that puts them in the rear-view or adds some competition like Google Fiber did or others. Google Fiber had an amazing impact to pricing and speeds in any market they entered. For the most part broadband has been lagging on real innovation and expansion, in favor of MBA metric pricing games and value extraction for some time.

</comment><comment><USER11> Great so we can let ISPs off the hook for all the money we've already given them for faster service they haven't provided. This is how our government works folks.

<comment><USER12> It's mostly how our Republican governments work.

<comment><USER13> Both sides are guilty of this, anyone who believe one party is less in it for fame, power, and money, than the other is just as naive as those that voted in our current president.

<comment><USER14> No. This both-sidesism is laughably wrong. There are extremely clear distinctions between the two parties. Anyone claiming they are the same is either intellectually lazy or corrupt.

<comment><USER15> Well, ok, fair point. You're forcing me to better articulate myself (I'm not the GP, but still...).

It's not that they're "the same," but they've come to reach a homeostasis that protects each side while not truly fixing hard problems. They may not have sought that out intentionally, but now that they're in it, they're intentionally, happily, staying in it.

The end result is, we're watching a play, where each side has some powerful dramatic lines full of tense conflict, but it's all fake and they're really cooperating to keep everything pretty much the same.

<comment><USER16> _The end result is, we 're watching a play, where each side has some powerful dramatic lines full of tense conflict, but it's all fake and they're really cooperating to keep everything pretty much the same._

I used to believe that, but I no longer do. The Trump administration, in particular the leaks associated with it, has given us a perspective that we've never had before as private citizens.

There really is a good side and a bad side here, and they are not secretly in bed with each other. No one would make themselves look this incompetent if they were reading from a prewritten script.

<comment><USER17> I'm surprised that people don't note again and again that the fearmongering and bitching about things like the ACA that the Republicans have done for this entire decade has led them into power... and yet they've got _nothing_ to offer. They've been complaining about the ACA for 7 years now, _and have had that long to develop a workable alternative_ , and they have nothing serious. You know, something that a white-haired conservative who claims to be good at management should actually have. Why are the Republicans not having their feet held to the same fire that they demanded when they were in opposition? Media pundits are too busy laughing at Trump to really bother.

We had the same thing happen here in Australia a few years previous; the opposition party just said "No!" to _everything_ that the incumbent government was trying. They got into power, and then realised that that trick only works when you're in opposition... and when that's the only muscle you've exercised, you're now lost at sea with no idea what to do. They had nothing but poorly- planned destruction on the cards; nothing constructive has come from their tenure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One more little sign America is more and more retiring its leadership in the world, opening doors for other nations to be more developed?

In a time where many European countries aim at providing 100Mbit as a minimum in the next years and thus also open rural areas for economic development, decision/opinions as the one described in the article seem ludicrous. Of course, providing net infrastructure in the US with its huge size is a challenge. Yet, in a country like Sweden with similar population density, 100Mbit is already kind of the basic minimum even in remote areas.

Here in my town in Germany we had super slow internet until 3 years ago. Now I can choose up to 400Mbit from different providers (100Mbit DSL or up to 400Mbit cable). Connectivity skyrocketed and it does in many other European areas. Now the US decides to lower standards? Is it the same kind of thinking as "we don't need high speed trains, we will have Hyperloop in 50 years", just adapted to "everything will be mobile one day"?

<comment><USER7> Looking at population density alone is misleading; what you really want is population-weighted population density ( _i.e._ how dense are the places where people live). Sweden has large sparsely-populated areas, but almost the whole population is clustered in a handful of major cities. The Stockholm metro area has a quarter of the entire country's population. If the U.S. population were distributed the same way, the D.C. metro area would have 80 million people over an area including Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. (Instead, it has only 6 million people and the vast majority of those states are rural).

In any event, the U.S.'s proportion of higher-speed connections compares pretty well to Sweden. According to Akamai, in Q4 2016 the U.S. at 42% of connections above 15 mbps. That's less than Sweden (49%) but comparable to Finland (44%). It's way higher than Germany (30%).

<comment><USER19> Even many dense urban areas in the U.S. have quite low broadband penetration, so it can't be chalked up entirely to low-density areas like small towns and rural areas. According to Fivethirtyeight [1], only 28% of adults within the D.C. city limits have home internet faster than dialup. And _Manhattan_ , pretty much the most urbanized locale in the country, is only a bit higher, at 36%. Many low-density exurban areas are actually higher than that, so something other than density is responsible.

[1] [https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lots-of-people-in- citie...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lots-of-people-in-cities-still- cant-afford-broadband/)

<comment><USER7> That's comparing apples and oranges. American metro areas are shaped very differently than European ones. Only 10% of people in the D.C. metro area live within city limits, versus 40% of people in Stockholm's metro area. That inner city population skews much poorer than the metro area as a whole, with a quarter of households making under $25,000 annually. That notwithstanding the city itself is very well wired. If you live in Anacostia (one of the poorest neighborhoods) you can choose from two gigabit fiber providers and two gigabit cable providers.

And as far as I can tell the difference in uptake is not really because broadband is cheaper in Stockholm Internet. Telia charges 990 SEK ($122) for gigabit. Comcast charges $150 for 2 gig, while Verizon charges $70-100 for 1 gig. At the low end, Telia charges $50 for 100/100, versus $40 for Verizon's 50/50 plan.

DC also is a good example of what I mean about population-weighted density. The D.C. metro area has about the same density as the Stockholm metro area, and the municipalities have about the same density too. But in Stockholm 40% of people live in the denser core city versus only 10% of people in D.C. So even though the metro areas have the same density, the distribution makes DC harder to wire (all else being equal).

<comment><USER19> > That inner city population skews much poorer than the metro area as a whole, > with a quarter of households making under $25,000 annually. That > notwithstanding the city itself is very well wired. If you live in Anacostia > (one of the poorest neighborhoods) you can choose from two gigabit fiber > providers and two gigabit cable providers.

Ah so the internet is good in theory, it's only in practice that internet connectivity is poor.

<comment><USER7> No in practice the Internet is great (see the Akamai stats above). And at least for fiber the price is comparable (see my edit above). The US just has more income inequality, and segregated poor people into inner cities. While lamentable, that is an orthogonal issue that has nothing to do with broadband policy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Unfortunately, a similar position is held by the NBN here in Australia (National broadband network), and indeed appears to be held by some members of the government.

This has been a long standing position even prior to the NBN existing, resulting in almost two decades of delays and debates in replacing half century old copper phone lines that provide much of the people's internet.

I wouldn't wish such lengthy technological delays on another country, so I hope this gets sorted out rather quicker than our issues have been.

<comment><USER21> The irony is that in Australia, mobile broadband is superior to wired in most areas.

Dear USA: please do not use this as evidence for mobile broadband's inherent superiority.

I recently moved to Germany and am on what is considered a slow DSL link: 32Mbps down, 8Mbps up. It's wonderful and life changing compared with the 4/1Mbps Telstra DSL I used to have.

<comment><USER22> The situation in Germany isn't perfect though. If you live in a more rural area it is not unlikely that there is no DSL available at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> California Assembly Bill 1665 attempted to something similar:

"Both Frontier and AT&T maintain antiquated DSL systems that serve millions of Californians who live in communities that don't have sufficient revenue potential. Low income and low density communities in other words."

[http://www.tellusventure.com/blog/california-bill- magically-...](http://www.tellusventure.com/blog/california-bill-magically- improves-broadband-service-to-280000-homes/)

AB 1665 seems on hold until legislators return on August 21:

[http://www.tellusventure.com/blog/hostile-takeover-of- califo...](http://www.tellusventure.com/blog/hostile-takeover-of-california- broadband-subsidies-on-ice-for-now/)

</comment><comment><USER24> > But during the Obama administration, the FCC determined repeatedly that > broadband isn't reaching Americans fast enough, pointing in particular to > lagging deployment in rural areas.

No skin off my back. I already have internet service significantly better than the FCC broadband definition, and my core concern in this space is net neutrality. Rural areas are the ones that will be negatively affected by this kind of policy change in the coming years. You get what you vote for in this case.

<comment><USER25> > No skin off my back

How many customers have trouble accessing your website or service? How many potential customers, vendors, partners, employees etc have limited education and income because they lack basic resources?

<comment><USER24> Rural areas went strongly for Trump and the Republicans, and now Republican appointees are making policy decisions that will have negative effects on those areas. The conclusion I draw from this is that those voters either don't care about their internet speeds, or they do but value other things more and vote with those in mind (or maybe they think the market will take care of it). Regardless, they're getting what they voted for, and it doesn't affect me.

Side note - the US population is heavily urban/suburban, so even if I was running some kind of internet-based business, the loss from ignoring/losing rural areas is something like ~25% of the population; imo it doesn't really matter that much.

<comment><USER26> An alternative might be that they are slowing independent media penetration in rural areas. If internet speeds are ~ 1-2 mbps then streaming HD isn't smooth, but all the digital over the air broadcast FOX / NBC / ABC are available in HD for free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Fuck Pai. More and more Americans are working from home. That alone is reason enough that we need fast broadband. I know he doesn't care about people and their needs but scum like him are at least usually persuaded by business arguments so I'm making one here. He's not a representative of anyone. He was not elected. It's not his job to decide what Americans want. The only way to fix this FCC travesty is to get rid of the pro business, anti citizen scum who appointed him.

<comment><USER28> > _I know he doesn 't care about people and their needs but scum like him are > at least usually persuaded by business arguments_

I think Pai is the kind of scum that's only persuaded by what's filling up his own intestines.

He's not on some kind of Peter Thiel-level of cerebral, cold-hearted business mastery. He's just a big fat leech that somehow managed to climb the ladder far too high for anyone's good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Fix link so it points to article top, instead of comments (?)

[https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2017/08/maybe...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2017/08/maybe-americans-dont-need-fast-home-internet-service-fcc- suggests/)

<comment><USER29> Yeah you have to click full story button to see article

</comment></comment><comment> norea-armozel I wonder how long until Pai adds extra regulatory requirements for utility cooperatives that will spring up to kick the telcos out of the rural areas? I'm not joking about that notion since the telcos really _hate_ cooperatives that spring up and replace or compete with them.

</comment><comment><USER30> As someone who lives in a very expensive area, I would happily live in a more rural or less populated area if there was decent infrastructure to do so. I don't think that internet alone is the solution, but faster internet across the country is one of the hurdles for remote work and (theoretically) better distribution of the population.

I know that a lot of other pieces have to fall into place to make this happen, but the entire country wired with strong backbones and last mile service will definitely help.

</comment><comment><USER31> The FCC is wrong. The Internet is intertwingled with everything we do these days. I live in non-urban Montana at the end of a DSL line suffering "bandwidth exhaust", a term my ISP (CenturyLink) coined to describe what happens when they sell "high speed" Internet to many customers but do not adequately provision their DSL network to support them. This shortfall is being fixed, but progress is glacial. How to bring everyone on-board the Internet is still a work in progress.

</comment><comment><USER32> Clickbait headline.

FCC expresses possibility that in the near-future wireless connectivity may be more important to consumer internet users.

Admitting "we don't know which way this industry is going to go" is probably a healthy thing for government to do.

<comment><USER33> The headline's accurate, IMO. The FCC is seeking comment on whether slower mobile connections should be considered sufficient when measuring overall broadband internet access deployment.

25Mbps/3Mbps wired is already an unambitious requirement, and Pai dissents from it having been raised from a previous 4/1 requirement, and suggests that a 10/1 mobile connection would be enough.

The whole proposal sounds like they just want to lower the bar to what's available now and toss up the "Mission Accomplished" banner.

<comment><USER34> I don't think you read actual proposal by FCC. They seem to suggest set 25/3 as a minimum and don't say anything about maximum. Their goal is a bit different from what you are thinking, their goal is to make sure every single person in USA has access to reasonable speed. You want 1gbit internet, but if that comes at a cost of some people in rural America to not have internet then it doesn't fit their goal. Therefore statement like "if we only had one choice of 25/3, we'd take it" can be easily taken out of context. They are clearly suggesting minimum and not maximum.

<comment><USER33> You're right, I didn't read the FCC proposal; I'm basing my information on the article itself. If the facts in the article are that far off of what the proposal itself says, then I'm confused why the whole post hasn't been flagged to oblivion.

<comment><USER34> I honestly have same question for a lot of articles these days. Especially with any sort of "hard to read" documents like research papers and stuff like long proposals/memos. I noticed trend where journalists just want to get clicks at any cost and willing to take things out of context to do so. Also there are more and more people that want to push their agenda with identity politics and rather than judge each idea on it's own merits, they will reject anything that comes from particular person/establishment/group that they don't like. After getting burned by this a number of times in recent past, from now on I always read original source before jumping to conclusions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Yeah and the telecoms are going to charge for each device... with my home connection. I can serve all my devices locally from one trunk... With mobile I have to have a data plan for each device...

</comment><comment><USER36> A lot of people did not read this article: It is about mobile.

It is actually about mobile home access. Generally:

\- mobile coverage in the home is different from outside of the home. The primary focus of radio planning was outdoor coverage and the networks reflect this. I suspect this is about having a mobile access point at a fixed location which helps a little via antenna and positioning vs. a cell phone.

\- mobile networks have been planned with totally different traffic assumptions and those are literally cemented into base-station locations.

\- mobile is a shared medium with low constraints. It will be hard to guarantee minimum rates. Much harder than for fixed networks. There is a reason for the data caps - if there were not then competition would have long eliminated them.

\- disincentives for scale: Providing data rates for one home may be easy. But if all the neighbors hop on that bandwagon then things get more difficult.

It is possible in principle but the cost for universal mobile access service and these bandwidth guarantees with the current technology may be quite high at this time. Anecdotal evidence of localized solutions also in other countries exist but can anyone point to a place where such a service has been deployed in a large country?

</comment><comment><USER37> This is about suppressing information availability and opportunity in rural areas.

Sorry financially-challenged rural dweller, you only have a phone with a fixed data allowance. I guess you'll need to continue relying on old media for your information needs. Have fun with whatever the public library has to offer-- oh by the way we're cutting the library from our budget.

Oh and those of you who, despite our best efforts, discovered that you can learn a knowledge trade and work from home, staying near your family and friends, bringing money into the local economy rather than move to a city? Sorry, it's not in our political interest to allow you to broaden your horizons.

</comment><comment><USER38> Also, could somebody explain to me what is the function of FCC in setting those "standard" speeds?

> This would also be the first time that the FCC has set a broadband speed > standard for mobile; at 10Mbps/1Mbps, it would be less than half as fast as > the FCC's home broadband speed standard of 25Mbps/3Mbps.

I mean, what that "standard" does? Is it prohibited to sell connection slower than this? Clearly not, since there tons of home internet offers slower than 25/3\. So what is the meaning of this standard, what consequences does it have? Of course the press, who is supposed to inform me, is too busy trying to propagandize me and forgets to explain what that all actually means. Could fellow HNians fill the gap?

<comment><USER39> Money, the answer is always money.

The speed standard is used to funnel money to the incumbents. The incumbents are supposed to improve and/or upgrade their speeds or coverage to match these standards in return for these subsidies, but reality has a way to get in the way. In practice the incumbents pocket the money and deliver whatever they feel like.

<comment><USER38> If this is true, then the meaning of the article is "FCC was going to spend tons of money to bribe ISPs into upgrading everybody to unrealistically high speeds, but instead they decided they would spend slightly less money to have ISPs to upgrade everybody to still unrealistically high speeds, but slightly lower, which wouldn't be happening in any case because there's no enough infrastructure to support it".

<comment><USER39> I don't quite follow your argument. Which speeds are unrealistically high?

<comment><USER38> Looking at current offers and infrastructure, expecting everybody to be hooked up to minimum 25/3 line IMO is unrealistic.

<comment><USER39> Why do you feel that? You can get within spitting distance with ADSL, and that's without bonding. Plenty of other DSL flavors beyond that too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The sentiment, that Americans don't NEED fast home internet is probably more accurate than not. It's not relevant though. Need has never been the driving force in the market. It's want, and if people want it, there's no reason they shouldn't have it. Why would the head of the FCC care if people need high speed? Only if he were in the pocket of the ISP's. Then he'd need a way to NOT create rules that mandates high speed internet. And if it's not a requirement, then it's up to the business to charge whatever they want without regulation. It's insidious, and quite clever albeit evil.

<comment><USER41> > _The sentiment, that Americans don 't NEED fast home internet is probably > more accurate than not._

No, it's total bullshit, except in the pedantic "well, humans don't NEED electricity/medicine/communications/synthetic shelter/[anything since we wandered the plains of Africa and had a life expectancy in the 40s]" sense. Fast, symmetrical end point Internet is of massive importance and in not just direct but emergent ways that a surprising number of people, even on HN, don't seem to consider. Think for example of many of the concerns that have been raised over the last few years here about how the net has become ever more centralized, or about the difficulties of efforts like Tor. A lot of the core driver for that comes down to lack of end point bandwidth vs demands. If symmetrical gigabit connections were the rule rather then the exception, it'd be possible once again for significantly sized services run directly. Obviously if a service grew large enough they'd eventually need to move towards the core, but for a lot of people it'd completely eliminate the need for many current colo and cloud offerings. Would you be happy going back to thinnet or 10BASE-T on your LAN? Everything that runs there could run over the net with more bandwidth, latency only becomes a significant issue over extremely long distances.

More bandwidth also means more can start to be devoted to meta-content issues like privacy. If we consider 25 Mbps to be a target for many services say, then onion routing networks are hard to make use of because they tend to impose significant overhead and be limited by slow nodes (particularly as even someone with a "enough" 25 Mbps connection themselves often would not be willing to allow all of that to be used by the larger network). But if everyone had 1000 Mbps (or more) to play with, then they could easily devote a bunch of that to sharing networks, take even a 90% overhead hit, and _still_ have as much bandwidth as they needed. Just as more power in CPUs/GPUs has allowed us to not merely run things faster, but optimize towards the value of human time vs computer time, more bandwidth "then needed" represents leeway to optimize towards goals beyond the bare necessities.

Seriously, giving everyone (or close enough) fast, symmetrical connections should be one of the absolute highest priorities of anyone concerned about market competition, centralized control, privacy, and so on. It'd be one of the best investments America could make, just as national electrification, telephone, and roads were.

<comment><USER42> > No, it's total bullshit, except in the pedantic "well, humans don't NEED > electricity/medicine/communications/synthetic shelter/[anything since we > wandered the plains of Africa and had a life expectancy in the 40s]" sense.

That assertion seems reasonable to me. What does "fast" even mean? Don't know? Then it's a good assertion. You don't need what isn't defined.

This is not the same as "humans don't NEED access to nuclear materials", because the acceptable safety measure is currently 0. So that's also a feasible assertion. The question about tradeoffs and what is practical has to be answered first. Until you say what the minimum is, there's no point arguing about how supposing an upper limit (to what is needed) is wrong.

<comment><USER43> > _That assertion seems reasonable to me. What does "fast" even mean? Don't > know? Then it's a good assertion. You don't need what isn't defined._

Says who? Love and friendship aren't defined either, but humans need both.

<comment><USER42> So do you need a lot of love and friendship or a little? "Need" of a category type isn't about what that is, it's always a matter of scale. I was speaking to scale, which is why I phrased the example in that manner. Can you stop trying to avoid the question and at least give some answer to my question? What does "fast" mean? What the FCC calls "fast" or some other value measurement?

<comment><USER44> Do you need electricity? How much?

Do you need food? How much? If you get thinner your TDEE lowers, so you "need" less.

Do you need running water to your house? Hoe much? Our hygiene has in part made us live longer, but maybe we just "need" a few pints a day to drink?

Do you need a refrigerator?

Stop muddying the waters. Internet access is increasingly relevant, and before we had it (as with electricity and running water) we didn't know so. It's not a problem to give people much better, faster and uncapped access, it's only not in the monetary interests of incumbent ISPs and their puppet Ajit.

<comment><USER42> > Internet access is increasingly relevant,

I would argue it's a necessary right. That's not the issue and I ask again, what does fast mean? It has no intrinsic meaning.

> Stop muddying the waters.

Insisting the terms of a negotiation before taking an agreement is not muddying the issue. It's rationally rigorous and seems to be problematic. That's why it's worth discussing. I'm still waiting.

<comment><USER44> > Insisting the terms of a negotiation before taking an agreement is not > muddying the issue.

Is that why you conveniently disregarded my other questions? If you can't answer those, it should inform you of why your question is disingenuous, which was my point. I'm still waiting.

<comment><USER42> > Is that why you conveniently disregarded my other questions?

The question is still about degree. Starting with new off-topic propositions to attempt to derail, are for your own entertainment. Since you're just here to argue about anything but the issue at hand, I'll wish you good luck.

The question stands. What does "fast" mean, in regards to need? A natural negotiation before condemning an imagined policy that has not specified limits or prerequisites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The need for high throughput residential connections is almost entirely driven by use of video streaming services (Netflix etc). So if you assume people don't need those (e.g. if you are a satellite tv company) then this makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER46> The title seems a little clickbaity. It seems all that's being said is the FCC is recommending a reasonable minimum, not a maximum. I don't think it makes sense to run gig fiber connections to rural homes unless someone is footing the bill, but they definitely should have some internet capability, and 10/1 mobile and 25/3 direct seems at least minimally viable.

This title makes it sound like the FCC is advocating that speeds above those are unnecessary for anyone, as if they're coming for your network speed. I don't get the sensationalism here, this hardly even seems newsworthy.

<comment><USER47> While not exactly rural, I certainly enjoy having rock-solid gigabit fiber here in Rome, Georgia (via AT&T Fiber). And while mobile networks are improving, I can't envision mobile as an adequate replacement to dedicated fiber, at least currently. Especially given the variability in signal strength and speed. Not to mention data caps and throttling are also pre

And just because a cell provider purports to offer LTE within a geographic area, that doesn't translate to LTE being available and reliable _within and throughout_ your residence. In the past, I frequently experienced downgrades to 3G and Edge, with only intermittent LTE availability.

I don't think we're in disagreement; I just wanted to share my perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> American's don't need modern fancy cars either. We have surreys, wagons, and horseless carriages too.

(The sarcasm is real. Claiming that home internet access is unneeded implies a fundamental misunderstanding, a regressive misunderstanding, of how society has transformed in the past 20 years.)

</comment><comment><USER49> It's too bad internet speeds went nowhere under President Obama's administration. According to Wikipedia, internet speeds are currently faster in Mongolia and Romania than in the US. I hope the change in leadership and changing regulations will help the US regain its competitive edge.

<comment><USER50> It's great you have your own opinion, but if you're going to claim that internet access and bandwidth did not improve at all in the past 8 years you should probably back that up with reputable data.

<comment><USER49> >if you're going to claim that internet access and bandwidth did not improve at all in the past 8 years

I don't see where I said that. If you'd like a data point, then look no further than the ultimate failure of Google Fiber. The largest internet company in the US can't successfully deploy fiber. Meanwhile in Japan, fiber is available almost everywhere, even in rural Hokkaido.

I don't want to be stranded on slow internet while the rest of the world races away to faster and faster speeds. I hope president Trump's strategy to Make America Great Again works out, and we get fast internet here too. Whatever the previous administration's plan was, it clearly wasn't working.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> More likely the FCC is doing the bidding of those who wish to squash competition.

</comment><comment><USER52> And this is why Kenya has faster average mobile internet than the USA.

</comment><comment><USER53> Symmetrical 2Gbps, which is offered by Comcast in some regions, is probably too fast for 99.99% of consumers... but it is nice if you have the option

</comment><comment><USER54> 10Mbps is more than I've had at home up until very recently.

It's fine for me; I work mostly in plain text and prefer it whenver there's an option. But undertand many people want more. Don't understand the FCC weighing in one way or the other. Should be up to private enterprise to provide what customers want to pay for. Get rid of the local monopolies, get out of the way, and watch what happens.

</comment><comment><USER55> _sigh_ they're taking a leaf out of the Australian government's book.

</comment><comment><USER56> We are seriously becoming a third world country.

\- 5300 water systems in violation of lead rules: [http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/28/us/epa-lead-in-u-s-water- syste...](http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/28/us/epa-lead-in-u-s-water- systems/index.html)

\- rank 16 in road quality [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-sad-state-of- americas-roads/](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-sad-state-of-americas-roads/)

-expensive, slow mobile phone service compared to rest of the world [http://time.com/money/3633758/wireless-cost-us-world-ofcom/](http://time.com/money/3633758/wireless-cost-us-world-ofcom/)

\- Piss Poor electrical grid, with an increasing number of outages [http://insideenergy.org/2014/08/18/power-outages-on-the- rise...](http://insideenergy.org/2014/08/18/power-outages-on-the-rise-across- the-u-s/)

\- 1 out of 9 bridges are structurally deficient [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/19/transp...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/19/transportation- for-american-us-bridges-repair/2434369/)

\- rising death rates for prime age whites due to massive drug epidemic, obesity, and loneliness [http://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2017/03/23/52108333...](http://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2017/03/23/521083335/the-forces-driving-middle-aged-white-peoples- deaths-of-despair)

\- highest incarceration rate in the world [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate)

\- highest first day infant mortality in the industrialized world [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-has-highest-first-day- infant-...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-has-highest-first-day-infant- mortality-out-of-industrialized-world-group-reports/)

\- U.S. adults rank below average in basic educational skills [https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/10/08/us-adults- ran...](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/10/08/us-adults-rank-below- average-global-survey-basic-education-skills)

\- Expensive, broken healthcare system that bankrupts families. We spend twice OECD average on a percent GDP basis with below average results [https://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/Health-at-a- Glance-2015-Ke...](https://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/Health-at-a- Glance-2015-Key-Findings-UNITED-STATES.pdf)

\- Expensive, broken tertiary education system that bankrupts students. We spend twice OECD average on tertiary education and get poor results. [https://data.oecd.org/eduresource/spending-on-tertiary- educa...](https://data.oecd.org/eduresource/spending-on-tertiary- education.htm)

\- Awful, expensive secondary education system compared to rest of industrialized world [https://data.oecd.org/pisa/mathematics-performance- pisa.htm](https://data.oecd.org/pisa/mathematics-performance-pisa.htm)

\- Slow, expensive broadband compared to rest of the world [http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-falls-behind-rest- of-t...](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-falls-behind-rest-of-the- worlds-broadband-download-speeds-2017-8)

-all of the above probably contributes to us ending up poorer (in terms of median wealth) than other industrialized nations even though per capita GDP is high and taxes are low

[http://www.middleclasspoliticaleconomist.com/2012/07/us- trai...](http://www.middleclasspoliticaleconomist.com/2012/07/us-trails-at- least-15-oecd-countries-in.html)

</comment><comment><USER57> I get by with 0.9mbps so F you all.

</comment><comment><USER58> Yeah, corruption runs amok. May be Americans don't need corrupted FCC more?

</comment><comment><USER59> I'm just flabbergasted by this preposterous proposition.

<comment><USER43> Are you? Or did you just wanted to use several $10 words in a row?

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> > the 25/3 Mbps standard we propose would not even allow for a single stream > of 1080p video conferencing, much less 4K video conferencing.

Could somebody explain to me why one needs 4K for video conferencing? No, I mean it'd be nice to have tons of bandwidth, but why 4K video conference is an absolute necessity? The article kinda makes it sound like not having 4K video conferencing is the state of absolute depravity and without it it can't be even called proper internet service. Can anybody explain it to me?

<comment><USER60> This is about broadband, broadband is supposed to be fast.

From the law: "(1) Advanced telecommunications capability: The term 'advanced telecommunications capability' is defined, without regard to any transmission media or technology, as high-speed, switched, broadband telecommunications capability that enables users to originate and receive high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video telecommunications using any technology."

Originating high-quality video for the near future should reasonably mean 4k video worth of upstream bandwidth.

Also, 25 MBps is still really wimpy. In any reasonable moore's law resembling curve we should have 1-10 Gbit broadband by now.

<comment><USER38> > This is about broadband, broadband is supposed to be fast.

It is fast. The question is what is the use of 4K video conferencing. None of the usages I've seen require anything even close to it.

> In any reasonable moore's law resembling curve we should have 1-10 Gbit > broadband by now.

Why internet speeds should follow Moore's law? Where did you find the law of nature that requires it? Should we also have flying cars, real hoverboards and robots doing all the work while we relax in holodecks?</comment></comment></comment>


Commenting without the comments - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tessalt/echo-chamber-js <comment><USER2> This is just brilliant. Any site that has an issue with toxic comments could really use this.

<comment><USER3> I could see a system similar to this working into a temp "shadowban" system, where, if a poster starts spamming up a forum or comments section, said banned users' posts can't be seen by anyone else but the poster, and all discussion threads created after the "ban" by said poster are discarded, _but_ still show up as if they were successfully posted.

This could help clean up a lot of "OH ME TOO LOL" or "first post" posters if they're trying to get around those filters, without the user realizing he's been banned and start retaliating.

A bit of a "12 year old" filter, if you will. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't get all the negativity. I read a lot of blogs where there's 90% civil discourse and just keeping in touch with people. If you happen to have a huge site with a lot of drive-by traffic, why not just disable comments?

</comment><comment><USER5> Can you please take my money?

EDIT: Wait, you're not the creator. Forgot this was not a ShowHN thread.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wish I came up with this. I've never been a fan of ecmascript, but this was certainly an exception and endless fun.

I am however working on a server-side version that is just a simple perl cgi that stores comments in a file named after the users IP address. That way any browser at their location will see their message. Maybe I will put it on github if I spend enough time to do it right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> this is brilliant, needs some local robot code to argue..achem "converse" with the commenter. bonus points for multiple robot personalities, misspellings and foul language.

</comment><comment><USER6> okay.. still looking at this - you know you've got internet awesome when its :

a) totally "relevant" after being around 4 years

b) has 1000s of github stars and 100+ of forks :)

<comment><USER6> ..down voted, hmmm, that was a serious comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is evil, I love it

</comment><comment><USER8> Someone stole HN's source?!

<comment><USER3> I hate to break it to ya, but...

<comment><USER6> haha -- I actually opened up inspector to check hn localstorage ;) ;)</comment></comment></comment>


EU lawmakers urge regulators to break up Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/27/eu-google-idUSL6N0TH2FS20141127

<comment><USER2> They could just double down on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero)

What I find rather disturbing is that this isn't so much based on the idea of increasing search competition, but apparently, is being pushed forward because Axel-Springer and others want to charge people for linking and snippets. But if Google had say, 50% marketshare in the EU shared with a competitor, or even a three-way split, it's unlikely to competition would convince anyone to do something as web-breaking as to start paying people for the right to link. Bing already has a sizable marketshare in the US, and yet, neither Google nor Bing are paying the New York Times for search snippets or links.

These publishing orgs are having their business models killed by digital media, you know, models like charging exorbitant pricing for scientific journals behind paywalls, or for school textbooks, or having pricing power of advertising markets, and want to abuse copyright to extract fees from deep pockets. (I'm lumping in Axel-Springer with Springer-Verlag here)

Maybe there is a good argument to be made there should be competition in the EU in search. But protectionism for publishers who want to abuse what has always been assumed a fundamental web freedom, and fair use, I think is a pretty poor reason. The fact that the backers of this motion are also working for the publishers is a huge conflict of interest, and no doubt there's probably intense backdoor lobbying by Microsoft.

<comment><USER3> Google doesn't even care too much about fair use here: any newspaper that doesn't want it's articles to appear in the search results can already take them out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Facebook is eating into Google's advertising revenue. Despite the success of Android, Google's mobile platform, the rise of smartphones may undermine Google: users now spend more time on apps than on the web, and Google is gradually losing control of Android as other firms build their own mobile ecosystems on top of its open-source underpinnings. "

(from: the economist article - [http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21635000-european- move...](http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21635000-european-moves- against-google-are-about-protecting-companies-not-consumers-should-digital))

I read Peter Theil's zero to one, I feel this article is trying to make an effort to some how dress-up Google's search monopoly (just like the way in the book Peter points out Monopolies want to hide by expanding their competition space definition).

<comment><USER5> Smart phones are becoming the ultimate demise of the internet. People want instant gratification and don't do their research on what they read and automatically assume the click bait they fell for to be true... Perhaps they should introduce a PageRank system into their EdgeRank algo to keep the click bait spammers at bay? Boom Google ded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm gonna say the article "Should Digital Monopolies be Broken Up", in the Economist, is a much more informative article.

<comment><USER7> The link, to save anyone about 2 seconds on Google: [http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21635000-european- move...](http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21635000-european-moves- against-google-are-about-protecting-companies-not-consumers-should-digital)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8666932](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8666932)

</comment><comment><USER9> Reducing the effectiveness of search does almost nobody any good. If the concern is so great, pool some resources and make an equivalent government sponsored search engine. Which probably no one will use because as much as they mistrust Google, they likely trust their government even less.

<comment><USER10> What Google is doing so far is actually REDUCING the quality of the overall search, by promoting their own services unfairly more than the competition.

So no, letting them into a monopoly position harms the society more.

<comment><USER9> So how exactly is Google able to be in position to engage in this unfair promotion? Because they are.....?.

<comment><USER10> ...a monopoly.

<comment><USER9> I don't think so. But they do have a disproportionate market share. Why?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can we keep the hysteria down a bit? The resolution doesn't even mention Google. It merely suggests the European Commission looks into unbundling search-engines for fairly obvious reasons. It's just a resolution from the most toothless parliament on the planet, it has zero actual impact.

<comment><USER12> Of course it doesn't mention google but it is pretty obvious google is targeted given the current investigations by the commission.</comment></comment>


Show HN: IPO List – Curated list of publicly traded tech companies - <AUTHOR> http://www.ipolist.co <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN!

The maker here. This weekend we decided to put up a directory of the biggest tech IPOs.

For some backstory, following Snap's IPO we realized how unreadable the S1 fillings really are and therefore we decided to do something about it. We researched the most valuable tech IPOs and cherry-picked data with the goal of displaying it in a sexy way.

We really hope you like it and we're super open to feedback! Leave your thoughts in here

Sebastian</comment>


Chadwick Boseman Is Dead - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53955912 <comment><USER2> Fuck cancer, and Fuck the US Insurance system. I am in remission from leukemia at age 29, and my insurer was billed >1M USD. I payed out over $10000 in personal costs, despite a "$2000" /yr deductible (my treatment was over 1.2 yrs), and am in legal disputes with a medical bill claim on my credit report. And this is with "Cadillac" platinum-tier employer insurance.

Anyone not lucky enough to be a millionaire or 5% STEM professional is fucked.

Edit: cost of my admission, day 1: [https://imgur.com/a/pnMRRKw](https://imgur.com/a/pnMRRKw)

<comment><USER3> > Anyone not lucky enough to be a millionaire or 5% STEM professional is > fucked.

And cancer impacts a large percentage of us at some point in our lives. It's fucking awful. It's a failure mode of multicellular organisms, and each of us have lots of cells nearing that state continually.

I have some extremely controversial ideas to accelerate progress on beating the disease, but I get downvoted and called a monster every time I suggest them.

We need to create decephalized monoclonal humans. If we can grow humans that lack brains just like plants, we can vastly accelerate research in real human models.

Research is the rate limiting step. Let's give researchers the best model, orders of magnitude better than what they've got currently. It's like we're asking them to develop cutting edge graphics on pen, paper, and punch cards.

We would also get an unlimited supply of organ, tissue, and blood transplants and can potentially remove all the immune markers / reactive HLA groups. The whole process becomes a new industry that self-sustains itself.

We could even make in roads on simply replacing parts of ourselves as we age. Bone marrow and immune system replacements.

Everyone calls me evil, but it's the most moral thing we could do.

I'm clawing to try to make it to a point where I can push this hard.

<comment><USER4> No need for decephalization! Babies up to the age of one year have not yet formed minds. And, the leftovers after research and harvesting are a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout.

Seriously, I believe the essential problem is that we don't want to get used to treating beings who look, seem and feel human, as non-human. We want to, and are, moving in the opposite direction.

Man's inhumanity to man is worse than cancer.

<comment><USER3> A human without a brain is not a person.

An animal with high cognitive function is a person.

> Man's inhumanity to man is worse than cancer.

A brainless human has no rights, no feelings, and never existed as a conscious entity. It's a tool.

The inability to accept this as a remarkable solution is beyond disappointing.

<comment><USER4> You didn't consider the actual argument:

> we don't want to get used to treating beings who look, seem and feel human, > as non-human.

Doing so might enable you to counter it. Or at least, understand where others are coming from. Let me parallel your claims:

> A baby is a human without a mind - therefore not a person. A baby is an > animal without high cognitive function. A mindless human has no rights, no > feelings, and never existed as a conscious entity. It's a tool. Babies fail > the self-awareness mirror test (until about 15-24 months).

Do you feel comfortable doing this to other people's infants? How about your own first born?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What a gut punch.

It's hard to overstate the cultural impact a movie like Black Panther had. It maybe seems silly, seeing that it's a comic book movie, but it truly showed what can happen when you give a bunch of excellent folks a real summer blockbuster budget, who historically don't get carte blanche.

And to think of Boseman's artistic output while battling this awful disease. Truly a gift to the world.

<comment><USER6> Black Panther was the movie that made me realize how important minority representation can be in movies. I live near Baltimore, and the movie theatre near me was packed every weekend with kids and teens as part of youth programs. I think the movie was playing in that theatre for over two months after it had left most other theatres.

<comment><USER5> I used to teach high school in Baltimore. It was an intense job that I rarely miss, but I do wish I could have experienced seeing how the kids processed it.

Then again, it probably would have been hella irritating in the moment. Kids telling me "no mister Johnson I will not sit in my seat, Wakanda forever", in Wakanda accent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There was always a running joke that Chadwick Boseman was going to play every lead in every black male biopic ever. He was a hero to so many black kids. Tragic loss.

While battling stage 3 colon cancer he gave us Civil War, Marshall, Black Panther, Infinity War, Endgame, 21 Bridges and Da 5 Bloods.

<comment><USER8> Here's hoping that he's opened the way, inspiring others to follow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Such a great body of work in a short few years. RIP :(

</comment><comment><USER10> Chadwick was one of the few people from my area (Anderson County, SC) that made it out.

He had such an incredible and successful career and was really just beginning to become the A list celebrity he was born to be.</comment>


Show HN: Convert photo, image or picture into a poster - <AUTHOR> https://postercyborg.com/ <comment><USER3> Why do you put every filter on a different domain instead of one domain - <USER2> filtercyborg.com - where you can use all the filters?

<comment><AUTHOR> From past experience we know that our user will use only one filter and forget about all the other. Having 10 and plus filter tend to overwhelmed most user. We believe in the DOTADIW concept : "Do One Thing and Do It Well."

<comment><USER3> Got it. Have you had success with that? Is one of your sites used heavily now?</comment></comment></comment>


The Notes What Spawned JQuery (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://ejohn.org/blog/selectors-in-javascript/

<comment><USER2> I sometimes think that my getElementsBySelector script (which inspired Behavior, which in turn inspired jQuery) may end up being the most significant 130 lines of code I'll ever write. <http://simonwillison.net/2003/Mar/25/getElementsBySelector/>

<comment><USER3> Absolutely. The jQuery test suite still uses the original markup from your script's test suite. I wrote my selector implementation at about the same time that Dean Edwards wrote his (but he published first). You were the absolute first, though. Major kudos to you, for sure.

<comment><USER3> I just remembered that I had a full list of those whose work I used as inspiration on the original jquery.com site (including Simon Willison, Dean Edwards, and the Behaviour library).

<http://web.archive.org/web/20060203025710/http://jquery.com/>

<comment><USER4> I'm so glad to see Devo didn't get left off the list!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Posted: August 22nd, 2005"

Edit: Ok, now the title is edited.

</comment><comment><USER6> Whoa, where is submitter from? Interesting dialect of English where "what" works like "that".

<comment><USER7> It was likely unintentional here, but that dialect is Middle English; it sounds like "what" to our modern ears (so it's eggcorned into it a bit), but the word is really "wot." As far as I can search, wot is just defined as "know", but it seems to get used in place of "that" fairly often despite that definition, even by Shakespeare, so it's not like it's an unofficial use.

A clear example of the eggcorned form is the title of the fifth chapter of the Poignant Guide: "Them What Make the Rules and Them What Live the Dream."</comment></comment>


The Pink Collar Future - <AUTHOR> http://www.openthefuture.com/2012/05/the_pink_collar_future.html <comment><USER2> The sexist undercurrent of the article was thick, but it didn't ripple the surface until about half way though.

The mere idea of the 'pink collar' is silly. Hair cuts are a highly elastic service, and nursing and teaching are seeing a huge downward pressure in wages are are only being protected by unions.

> Nurses may be more valued than surgeons; kindergarten teachers paid better > than university professors.

Dogs and cats living together, human sacrifice, mass hysteria!

This article completely misses the point - 2000 years ago, machines did the work of 1000 men through pulleys and levers. 500 years ago, machines did the work of 1000 men through gears and belts. 100 years ago, machines did the work of 1000 men through steam and rail. 50 years ago, machines did the work of 1000 men through internal combustion. Ten years go, machines did the work of 1000 men through the transistor, and today machines do the work of 1000 men through advanced heuristic systems, statistical analysis, etc.

We will continue to automate processes so that we can all, collectively, lead better lives.

<comment><USER3> I'm not quite as sanguine on what technological change will do to employment, though I'm not sure what precisely it will do, either. I don't think the smooth progression you paint is quite accurate; there have been really major upheavals that had significant social impacts, not a slow transition with a constant ratio. The industrial revolution led to a large proportion of the population rushing to cities, and a whole host of urban problems (tenement housing, large-scale homelessness, urban crime, hygiene problems) that produced backlashes such as, at one extreme, Marxism, and at the moderate middle-ground, the modern welfare state and trade unionism.

In particular, there was a large, relatively short-term shift in employment, from "almost everyone" working in agriculture to a majority of people working in factories. It's not 100% clear to me what today's version of "factories" will be in that analogy, the mass employment sink that people can migrate to, the way they migrated agriculture->factories. I guess "the service industry" is as good a guess as any, which is roughly what this article is proposing a more specific version of (essentially, the high-touch, hard-to-automate subset of the service industry).

<comment><USER2> I think it's pretty clear that the shift from agri->factories will be mirrored by the shift from factories->unemployment.

There's simply nothing left for uneducated people to do. The service economy is a myth.

<comment><USER3> In that case, it's not clear to me how we'll "all, collectively, lead better lives", unless we transition to a much stronger welfare state, like in one of those sci-fi utopias where everyone's basic needs (food/shelter/healthcare) are taken care of by robots, and you only need to work if you want luxuries or feel a particular inner drive to do so.

If, on the other hand, we have a proportion of people doing quite well, and a large number of people unemployed in slums, that seems not too good as a collective outcome.

<comment><USER2> I think we're seeing option #2 right now. Unfortunately we'll probably be here for a while before we get to see option #1.

<comment><USER4> What makes you optimistic that we _will_ get to see #1 at some point?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The idea that men can't be empathetic and perform empathy based jobs such as nursing and teaching kindergarten is as silly as the idea that women don't have the logical aptitude for computer programming.

I can pretty much guarantee you that men have as much to bring to nursing and teaching as women do to the tech sector.

<comment><USER6> I don't think the OP--or anyone--is saying that men can't do these jobs. Very nearly the opposite. The article says that these jobs are currently "largely performed by women" and suggests that the barriers to men performing these jobs are contingent cultural factors, which may reverse.

<comment><USER3> That's slowly starting to happen in some areas, notably nursing. There are even starting to be a mirror-image of organizations like Society of Women Engineers (which advocate for women, who are under-represented in engineering) in growing areas where men are under-represented, such as the American Assembly for Men in Nursing (<http://aamn.org/>).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article seems heavy on vague predictions and light on data? And also phrasing everything as a question? Which alleviates them of the responsibility actual assertions?

That aside, it ignores the obvious other domain which is largely immune to mechanized replacement – designing the machines themselves (or software/algorithms/etc). A domain which, as we all lament here weekly, is still a heavily male dominated one.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. As blue-collar jobs are mechanized (or outsourced), the workforce gradually shifts towards knowledge work, which is inherently higher-paying.

Also, perhaps I am not forward-thinking enough, but I hope we never see the day where we have AI Kindergarten teachers. This is a pretty depressing future the author envisions, where cutting hair is among the most valued jobs but we leave the task of hacking at our insides to robots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> >This raises some big questions, of course, and not the least of which is how this will affect the social and economic status of these professions. Nurses may be more valued than surgeons; kindergarten teachers paid better than university professors.

If we maintain a capitalist economy and a large number of jobs do become mechanized (and not replaced with new jobs) it stands to reason that competition for the remaining jobs will increase. Competition results in driving the market price for jobs down, not up. While human nurses WOULD be paid better than robot surgeons, I don't think wages would increase--they'd decrease.

</comment><comment><USER10> The assumption that given "jobs where empathy and 'emotional intelligence' can be considered requirements" have been "immune to the creeping mechanization of the workplace" in the past we can expect them to exhibit such immunity in the future deserves more scrutiny.

A recent article on HN, "Do Kids Care If Their Robot Friend Gets Stuffed Into a Closet?" [1], showed that at least children will "attribute moral accountability and emotions" to relatively simple robots. I'm not sure I can say I'd definitely prefer a human kindergarten teacher in a hypothetical future where the alternative is a robot that objectively integrates the consensus scientific opinion on the ideal behaviour of a young child's developmental mentor tailored to the attributes of my child.

[1] [http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial- intel...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial- intelligence/do-kids-care-if-their-robot-friend-gets-stuffed-into-a- closet#.T56lSyNVoKY.hackernews)

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra Off: I'm slowly starting to hate the whole "Google Self Driving Cars" thing.

Usually it is a product first, a hype later. Hype without product is a vaporware. Google is a vaporware maker officially by forcing the "Google Self Driving Cars" meme on us. It's not much more real than praising Russian Giant Humanoid Combat Robots, for the in-joke.

I would bet some money to predict that there would not be any feasible automatic cars from Google, and ones that would actually enter your life are rather to be a product of some startup.

<comment><USER11> I disagree, they have already made significant progress on this and have done hundreds of thousands of miles with actual self driving cars.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdgQpa1pUUE>

I think with something like this, if it isn't Google then it will be one of the large car manufacturers first. I just don't see a random company popping out of nowhere and bringing something like this to the market as the costs involved in the production are going to be huge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Many creative processes are unlikely to get outsourced to machines: writing songs, drawing pictures, and composing poetry. Not that people haven't experimented with software that writes poetry or draws pictures, these projects tend to involve so much human oversight that they hardly represent a departure from business as usual.

Hopefully we will live in a world in which robots do all of the dangerous and boring tasks leaving us to compose ballads and knit sweaters.

</comment><comment><USER13> As far as I can tell, most consumers will happily jettison the 'personal touch' in pursuit of lower prices. (See: Walmart)

The coldly efficient robot nurse who can handle all the mechanical tasks but doesn't have human compassion will be cheaper and thus wildly preferred by anyone paying for health care. And that goes double when government/corporate/payment indirection leads to a lack of real choice by the direct consumer of health care.

Similarly as soon as robots can match an $8 haircut (and those are nothing special), they'll destroy the low-end of grooming.

Teaching has a fair shot; it's not generally acceptable to pursue reduced education costs in a vacuum. But I wouldn't underestimate the for-profit schooling industry's ability to selectively report and lobby their way into pitching robot teachers as the key to more _effective_ education.

<comment><USER14> We've already got robot teachers in many states as they move to online education. Which so far has cost a huge amount of money, made massive profits for private companies and failed to produce decent test results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a conversation that I think we all need to have. _In the future..._ creeps up faster and faster. Our mind's eye vision of how fast technology evolves is fixed. Looking back only a few generations, people will conflate that this can describe our inherit humanity for the foreseeable future. I don't think it does.

As an example, I often read opinion pieces by local well-to-do progressives; a topic that comes up often is our transportation infrastructure and how we should start buying, living, working _local_. For a variety of reasons, all of which I agree with for the most part. I can't help but ask myself – will it matter when every car drives itself and is propelled by emission-less energy? Far off, right? Maybe. Or maybe it's 10-15 years away.

<comment><USER16> Local food is one thing—it seems absurd to ship a cucumber thousands of miles when I can just grow some in my garden. But a global society is absolutely essential to the continued well-being of our species. Globalisation is a powerful force against misinformation and propaganda—and in turn xenophobia and war.

And our global transportation infrastructure isn't _perfect_ , but it _is_ the best it's ever been in all of human history. So I would argue that buying locally is far less important than, say, buying handcrafted goods from small businesses, regardless of location.

<comment><USER17> It seems to me that the availability of local food in sufficient quantities to feed tens of millions is a luxury of places which have the conditions necessary to produce such bounty. What does eat local mean for Canadians or people in Arizona? Greenhouses? It's a nice thing to have but a bit impractical for most, unless we would prescribe them a limited diet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My dad's been a nurse for just about three decades now. The twist is that he's been an APRN for most (or all) of that time, in specific a CRNA. He has also practiced in places where he's run the anesthesia department along with a small group (two-three others usually) of other CRNAs. Also men, in my experience.

Now, my first response to this is that his whole job requires preventing people from feeling pain, dealing with people who are in pain, and generally making pain go away. If that isn't empathy you've mis-defined the term.

My second response is to wonder whether APRNs in general are mostly male. If they are, that kind of blows this 'pink collar' stuff out of the water on a more factual basis.

Even if they aren't, though, it's still a dumb idea: Men do that kind of work. Men don't need to worry about being replaced by women in the medical field unless some idiot mandates that their jobs go to women simply because they're women.

(APRN: Advanced Practice Registered Nurse. A nurse who has training above and beyond what the average RN possesses, and has often specialized in a given sub-field.

CRNA: Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist. A CRNA handles anesthesia, which is all about minimizing pain. A CRNA may or may not operate under the supervision of an Anesthesiologist, who is an MD who specializes in anesthesia. Typically, CRNAs in rural areas work alone and are therefore among the few nurses allowed by law to prescribe drugs (the drugs that control pain are strictly controlled by law, as you may well imagine).)</comment>


How California is changing its roads for self-driving cars - <AUTHOR> http://www.scpr.org/programs/take-two/2017/07/12/57901/california-is-changing-its-roads-for-self-driving/ <comment><USER2> The last paragraph is the most interesting one from a policy perspective.

"I have a concern about it increasing Vehicle Miles Traveled because I don't have the capacity to handle that. We already don't have enough capacity for the number of miles that are being driven today."

Of course, they'll increase miles traveled _even if_ they're not allowed to drive around empty (which, of course, negates their use as taxis, etc.). Make something easier/cheaper/etc. and you get more of it. I expect this is still quite a ways off before it's a real question but it's going to be a problem for areas where infrastructure is already close to the limit.

<comment><USER3> I agree that Vehicle Miles Traveled will likely increase, but it's important to note just _when_ that increase will occur. I suspect that increases occurring in off-peak hours can be handled by current infrastructure.

<comment><USER4> Even if this is correct, an overall increase would increase road wear proportionally.

<comment><USER5> Weathering and heavy vehicles do most of the damage that is done to roads, so increasing passenger vehicle miles won't increase wear proportionally.

I guess if shipping increases that would increase road wear. But that is also an easy to justify tax.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Brad Templeton, who was also in attendance at the automated vehicle synopsum wrote:

"The AVS has a lot of governmental people, and they're all very keen to imagine their role, which they see as making the infrastructure "ready" for robocars. There was a whole long session on the topic, and many people who imagine there is a lot to do. This is the wrong impression. Robocars are being designed to handle the infrastructure we already have, and only low-skill robocar makers are suggesting we need to make significant changes to the infrastructure to enable these vehicles."

<comment><USER7> Holey hubris, Batman! I bet there will be large dark zones on the AV's maps, where they dare not go, for reasons they cannot comprehend with their own sensors.

<comment><USER2> Then I expect they won't be going to those large dark zones. I largely agree with his comment. It's not that we shouldn't do anything. (If it makes sense to make lane markings a bit wider, why not?) But if we really need to change large parts of infrastructure to accommodate automated vehicles, that's a non- starter just as it was when that sort of thing was discussed in the 1960s.

<comment><USER8> California already has made massive infrastructure changes from streetcar removal to building BART.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When we see articles about AI needing to be regulated by CEOs like Elon Musk, it's not because AIs are going to take over the world. It's because AIs alone cannot work seamlessly in certain environments and regulations are needed to make the environment(eg roads, signs, bicycles, pedestrians, other vehicles) conform to the needs of AI.

See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture)

Hopefully, when these regulations are written, there will be rules added to ensure drivers and mechanics can inspect and debug the computer code in their vehicles.

</comment><comment><USER10> > How do you delineate clearly?

> One area this comes into with California is we've been using those Botts' > Dots. The automated vehicles [AVs] can follow lane lines. They can't follow > the Botts' Dots, so we're actually changing our delineation standards to go > away from the Botts' Dots which we've been using for decades because AVs > have a difficult time following those.

That is very surprising due to claims of superhuman image recognition due to deep learning. Is it because of speed issues?

<comment><USER2> Lots of claims get made about AI capabilities that are... optimistic. From a paper on the topic: "Botts' dot marker detection is more difficult than that for white lines because small, sparse, low contrast regions are mixed in with road-texture noise." [https://trid.trb.org/view.aspx?id=1253090](https://trid.trb.org/view.aspx?id=1253090)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> No matter the technological progress, I know I'll hate the moment I'll cross a vehicle whom I can't interact with.

<comment><USER12> Why?

<comment><USER13> I was driving to work one day and the light was broken at the busiest intersection in town. People were able to make it through the intersection using hand signals and flashing headlights. How does this work when half of the cars are fully autonomous? How are computers going to understand what those hand signals mean?

A bridge in my town is under construction and it is down to one lane. They put up full stop lights at both ends of the lane closure to manage traffic. Every two or three times I go over that bridge, someone coming from the other direction goes on red because they can see no traffic is coming. I have to sit and wait for that vehicle before going or no one will be able to move.

I love the idea of fully autonomous vehicles, but next time you drive somewhere count the number of ambiguous situations that occur and ask yourself if you think a computer could be programmed to handle all of it. I'm rather skeptical.

<comment><USER14> There will be a rather long period where auto-cars still have steering wheels and can ask their occupants to take over.

<comment><USER2> That's almost certainly the case.

However, as soon as you've said that, you now have a requirement that:

\- There be a sober, competent, licensed driver in the vehicle

\- There needs to be a reliable non-instantaneous handoff from the vehicle to the snoozing driver

\- The driver is probably still ultimately responsible for actions taken by the vehicle

Don't get me wrong. I'll take a reliable highway autopilot system. But this does largely rule out many of the use cases that people are thinking about when they say self-driving car.

<comment><USER14> Those use cases can come after the technology has proven itself reliable. You don't have to have the perfect solution with the first production car.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think the self-driving plus electric cars will indeed change the transportation model by reducing the public transportation appeal. As the result the demand for more roads will only increase. Unfortunately, many politicians (as many generals) are fighting the previous war and building public transportation projects that will be abandoned even before completion (e.g. Brown's bullet train). Instead, we should be building more roads or may be more efficient roads (multilevel?) to acomodate the upcoming increase in traffic.

<comment><USER16> Studies have shown that increasing road capacity just causes more drivers to join the party to meet the supply. [1] Multilevel roads would be sick though. I'm hoping as vehicles become more autonomous they'll be able to move more efficiently, reducing congestion. A lot of slowdowns are artificial, people looking at an accident, a group driving slowly backing up a couple lanes.

1\. [https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced- demand/](https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> <widen the lane lines from four inches to six inches so they are readable.

Time for Time/Life to publish a coffee table book. My interstate and secondary roadway sysyem hasnt changed much. Accommodation will alter the feel.

</comment><comment><USER18> "Today, we know we can't put magnets in the pavement everywhere for cars to follow..."

Why not?

As someone from a Midwestern state, I fear that all the self-driving car development in California is going to miss the important edge cases we experience here. Snow, plows, salt, dirt, heavy rain, etc all destroy the visibility of lane lines.

What we need is something that can be a marker for cars that doesn't require line of sight, or else self driving cars aren't going to be able to navigate at the lightest snowfall.

<comment><USER19> > As someone from a Midwestern state, I fear that all the self-driving car > development in California is going to miss the important edge cases we > experience here. Snow, plows, salt, dirt, heavy rain, etc all destroy the > visibility of lane lines.

You overestimate the quality of roads in California. :) In San Francisco and Oakland the roads are, quite literally, falling apart. Take a ride on 880 -- straight up four lane high way with virtually no road markings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> >You'll be able to put more cars faster and closer together when they're autonomous.

I hate this misconception about driving. That being closer together (assuming front to back) is somehow useful. That restricts lateral movement and is one of the biggest causes of slowdowns on freeways. Say you're in the fast lane and you need to exit. If there is a column of cars next to myou, driving less than 1 car space apart, all of those cars need to slow down to adjust and let you over (or you need to slow down significantly, slowing the column of cars in your lane until you find an opening). Leaving space allows for lateral movement with no adjustment of speed.</comment>


Why aren't Angular and React as scalable as game engines? - <AUTHOR> https://www.skuid.com/blog/why-arent-angular-and-react-as-scalable-as-game-engines/ <comment><USER2> This is a spam post. It's just trying to sell Skuid.

But here's the reason. Web developers need to have their code work with multiple rendering engines with different bugs and interpretations of the specs. CSS is very finicky.

Basically you're always going to need to view the HTML/CSS. So trying to hide it behind a visual editor is setting yourself up for failure.

<comment><USER3> Didn't get the formatting right on the post; first time submitting something on HN. I'll add a tag next time.

I disagree with your point about how you're _always_ going to need to view the HTML/CSS. Sure, there's always a point at which it will become necessary, but when is it completely unnecessary? Do you really need to see the HTML for every button you put on the page? What about a header? A tabset?</comment></comment>


Foolproof: A Sampling of Mathematical Folk Humor (2005) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.ams.org/notices/200501/fea-dundes.pdf

<comment><USER2> Three other common jokes contrasting mathematicians with other people:

A mathematician meets one of his colleagues riding a superb bike. _" Where did you get that?"_, he asks. The other explains: _" Well, there was this beautiful girl riding the bike. When she saw me, she put the bike down, she got naked, and told me to take whatever I wanted."_ The first one thinks, and says: _" You chose wisely: her clothes would probably not have fitted you."_

A mathematician attends a conference about string theory, and seems to be enjoying a demonstration involving thirteen dimensions. The physicist sitting next to him asks: _" How do you manage to follow all that?"_, and the mathematician retorts: _" I can easily visualize it in my head."_ Impressed, the physicist says: _" Wow, you can really visualize it in thirteen dimensions?"_, but the mathematician replies: _" Of course not, but I just visualize in N dimensions, and then take N=13."_

A physicist comes up with a new equation that seems to fit his theory, and asks his mathematician friend to check it. A while later, the mathematician answers that the equation is false. In the meantime, the physicist used the equation to predict the outcome of a new experiment, and the results were excellent, so he tells his friend to check again. Moments later, the mathematician admits that the equation can be true, but _" only in the trivial case of positive real numbers."_

<comment><USER3> Real jokes! All of the jokes in the OP were puns or worse: plays on words. The lowest form of humor, and the easiest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a mathematician, I find many of these jokes very funny.

</comment><comment><USER5> An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician are riding the train in Scotland. The engineer looks out the window and spots a black sheep.

"Look", he says, "Scottish sheep are black".

"No, no", says the physicist, " _Some_ Scottish are black."

"No", says the mathematician, "in Scotland there exists at least one sheep, one side of which is black.

</comment><comment><USER6> A mathematician sees a frog by the side of the road. He stops and the frog says, "Kiss me and i will turn into a beautiful princess and fall in love with you." The mathematician puts the frog in his pocket. The frog asks "Why don't you kiss me?" Replies the mathematician, "I don't have any use for a princess. But a talking frog, that's cool..."

</comment><comment><USER7> I tend to prefer the dirty math jokes.

[NSFW?] The length of my "member" in inches is countably infinite. Just when you think you are all out of inches, you can always find more by inspection.</comment>


How KakaoTalk Grew From a Startup to a Giant Mobile Platform - <AUTHOR> http://www.techinasia.com/kakao-founding-story/

<comment><USER2> I deal with lots of East-Asians and _everybody_ I know has Kakaotalk. My wife and I use it exclusively instead of texting and she uses it almost exclusively for international calls. It works pretty well and it hasn't cost us a penny.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I get italic text? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I've seen a lot of people having italic text when quoting someone, how do I write italic text here on HN?<p>Thanks. <comment><USER2> Well, there _is_ a FAQ, y'know. "What kind of formatting can you use in comments?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc> "

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, sorry, didn't see any link to an FAQ, well, thanks.

<comment><USER3> Link to the faq is at the bottom of this page, just above the search box.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, okey, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.</comment></comment>


Explaining how fighting games use delay-based and rollback netcode - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/10/explaining-how-fighting-games-use-delay-based-and-rollback-netcode/ <comment><AUTHOR> Context: Dolphin-emulated Super Smash Bros Melee had rollback-based netcode released today - [https://twitter.com/Fizzi36/status/1275096470765490176](https://twitter.com/Fizzi36/status/1275096470765490176)</comment>