More than 39M Americans Only Have Access to One Wired Broadband Provider - <AUTHOR> http://broadbandnow.com/report/2013-underserved/ <comment><USER2> Basing this analysis on ZIP Code greatly underestimates the reality many Americans face, especially in more densely populated areas.

Here in New York (10003, for example), the site says I have four options for broadband, but in reality, many buildings have exclusive contracts with ISPs (I could only get TWC in my old building, for example).

My sister lives in Miami and she also has access to one ISP, despite the site giving two options. Her ISP, Hotwire Communications (which gives her "up to" 20 Mbps), isn't even listed.

Same thing with my parents' ZIP Code (and they live in a single family home). The site says they have access to three ISPs, but one of them is only 12 Mbps and the other isn't actually available.

<comment><USER3> There's nothing you can really do about this. Even if there were dozens of potential providers, apartment buildings wouldn't want to accommodate dozens of companies running wiring through their building or putting equipment in their telecom closets. And they certainly don't want to take on the cost and hassle of maintaining their own wiring inside the building.

<comment><USER4> >>Even if there were dozens of potential providers, apartment buildings wouldn't want to accommodate dozens of companies running wiring through their building or putting equipment in their telecom closets.

I don't see why this is such a big deal. Where I'm from, different telecom companies come into apartment buildings to set up boxes and run wires and everyone is OK with it.

<comment><USER3> In our building, a brand-new luxury complex with hundreds of units, the building owner wouldn't even let Verizon run fiber to each unit. They were only allowed to get into a telecom closet on each floor with VDSL the last few hundred feet.

<comment><USER5> Single-provider building policies will eventually reduce the market value of the real estate, eliminating any minor economic benefit that may accrue in kickbacks from the single provider.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm lucky, I have access to two really shitty, overpriced providers, not just one shitty, overpriced provider.

<comment><USER7> I'm in the same boat, living in a small town in Iowa. We pay $57.95/month for the fastest package — 12M down and 512K up. If my ISP ever gets uppity, I have the "luxury" of switching to the only other provider at $39/month for 6M down and 512K up.

The price of living in a small town I guess.

<comment><USER8> Chicago suburb. $120 for 50/10\. I have one other option, but I stopped doing business with AT&T a decade ago. I agree this _is_ better speed for the price than yours, but only marginally. Areas with affordable, reliable, fast broadband are the exception, not the rule. There are _very_ few areas with competition.

<comment><USER9> Also, don't forget the caps. I think we should start adding a third value to the downstream/upstream tuple. So I have 30/10/350G.

Most of us are paying for a fixed amount of data now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Maryland/Baltimore don't show up on that list, but while Verizon has some existing DSL (not FiOS) customers, they don't seem to be taking any new customers (and you can find no evidence on the internet that they offer DSL in Baltimore).

Baltimore essentially only has a Comcast option.

I wonder if it's actually even worse than this article suggests -- not only is DSL slower than most people want, but there are some places Verizon may technically 'offer' DSL, but in fact not really. (many places? I think Verizon is focusing on FiOS and there may be other places that they only 'offer' DSL, but do not really offer it at all?)

<comment><USER11> When I lived in Tucson I had a similar problem. IIRC Comcast offered acceptable speeds (15/1?) and Qwest or similar offered maybe 1.5 Mbs down and less up. "Competition" existed only in a theoretical sense.

I actually tried writing to the head of Qwest Arizona and Qwest nationally to try and convince them to run faster pipes to my area—a lot of students and younger people who like fast Internet access lived there—but didn't get any action.

<comment><USER12> "Qwest"\---Century now, right?---has never been very serious about this, but then again I've read that unlike AT&T and Verizon they also didn't try to compete with the cablecos on video. So as I recall they didn't put egregious caps on their slow offerings.

Right now I'm in one of those locations that's outside of any city (but only by a hair, part of the property is inside one), so it's only AT&T. We could in theory enjoy ~1.5 Mbs down after a DSLAM upgrade some time ago, but we don't bother because AT&T, to protect their U-verse video offerings puts strict caps on DSL. Even in small-medium sized cities/metro areas like mine (Jopin), where they don't offer U-verse (besides that brand for new generation DSL), and pretty clearly never will. 150 "GB" as they calculate it, $10/each 50 GB over.

Now, having started in the bad old days when 1200 baud was fast, and if you were lucky you could get 2400 baud or greater on a direct link, I'm only so unhappy, with my parents disgruntled by this limit on Internet video. But we're certainly "roadkill on the Information Superhighway", and I don't, for example, see this being addressed by the White House/FCC proposed 300+ pages of new regulations. Then again, they're not yet public, but even the most positive descriptions indicate we're SOL.

Oh, yeah, the price keeps increasing, right now it's $39/month as long as you have an also expensive voice land line (all told with the nickle and diming taxes, another 30+ dollars).

On the other hand, AT&T i.e. SWB is a freaking telco, the service is rock solid. Everyone of my friend with cableco Internet service has notably worse reliability, enough to impact e.g. working from home.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The [Reddit] thread has much more information regarding this article, including the Author and co-founder of the site.

The head of this study is on reddit, as reddit.com/u/NickReese

This study does not take in account the upcoming change of bradband >=25Mbps . The current site uses >=10Mbps .

There's also question regarding their data, as it does seem compromised in certain locations. He was looking into it, after a few redditors that supposedly had multiple broadband providers only had one, and some none at all.

[Reddit] [http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2vk1xx/after_33b...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2vk1xx/after_33b_spent_more_than_39_million_americans/)

<comment><USER14> It shows 17 providers for Cupertino but many of them are business only, a lot of them don't even show claimed bitrates, and it looks like it's counting LTE as broadband (while it's fast, it's insanely expensive to actually use for more than a few gigs per month).

It's been a couple years since I moved out of there but at the time I'm pretty sure I only had one true broadband choice, Comcast. This being a few miles from Apple and Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a posting from July 22, 2014 that states, " _Yet as of the 2013 over 39 Million Americans (12.1% of the population) only have access to 0 or 1 broadband providers..._ "

What are the numbers now that broadband has been re-defined as "25 mbps" [1]?

[1] [http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-finds-us-broadband- deploymen...](http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-finds-us-broadband-deployment- not-keeping-pace)

<comment><USER16> Hey, co-founder of broadbandnow.com and author of the article. We'll be rerunning the stats with the new definition shortly. I'll make sure it's posted here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> More to the point, DSL is not "broadband" unless it is being used to avoid the need to send the CWA into an apartment building to rewire it.

<comment><USER18> I'd love to see the numbers on who can choose between one cable provider, and several (useless) providers of 3 mbps dsl.

I'll bet it's a lot more than 12%.

<comment><USER19> Has there happened a redefinition of broadband since it got faster?

I got 30MBit at the moment, but when I got my first DSL connection back in 2001 I got 1Mbit and it was considered broadband...

<comment><USER20> As of January, minimum broadband speed is 25Mbps: [http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/29/7932653/fcc-changed- defini...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/29/7932653/fcc-changed-definition- broadband-25mbps)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I live in Virginia and have access to ZERO wired providers and zero wireless -- all we have is satellite. That's because the state allowed Verizon and others to chomp up the lucrative northern Virginia market with FIOS without requiring that they upgrade the rest of their wired switching equipment in less-populated areas. So Verizon makes money on the nicest part of the market -- and the rest of us get nothing. And this is from a company using eminent domain to provide their service.

I thought it was a bad situation ten years ago. Now I think it's a scandal. Especially for poorer areas on the Mid-Atlantic, the tobacco deal was specifically supposed to provide broadband. The idea was that over time we would trade off tobacco farming for some kind of technology work. Instead we were sold out.

Just last week, a neighbor came to me asking about doing internet work for a call center from their house. I told them it was impossible, short of leasing a T-1 or T-3 from Verizon. I cannot tell you how whacked it is to say that in 2015.

<comment><USER22> Why is it Verizon's responsibility to provide you with service? I am certainly not a fan of big communication companies and the monopolies, but I can't see the logic behind your argument. How are you entitled to a fast internet connection?

If internet access is a concern of yours, it should likely factor into your thinking when choosing a place to live (just like access to other services like fire/police/education).

<comment><USER23> It's not. However, he's fairly entitled to have a beef with his government, that allowed such a deal to proceed knowing likely full well what the reality would be.

<comment><USER21> Which is exactly my beef.

Nobody here is demanding that any one company do anything. The thing is, we've electrified the country, we've run phone service to just about everybody. This is a solved problem. It's not like the internet was some super weird thing that's just impossible to do. You want the business in the lucrative areas, you gotta provide it in the not-so-lucrative areas. That's the trade we made with those other services, and that was the trade anybody in their right mind would have made with the internet.

Verizon's not to blame -- aside from just being weasels. There's no crime in that. (In my mind they could have made out better had they kept their eye on the public interest instead of quarterly reports, but that's neither here nor there. No crime in being short-sighted)

The problem here, as you point out, lies in the government officials. I swear after watching this go on year-after-year I find it extremely difficult to believe that anybody can be that inept. I strongly suspect payoff money somewhere, but I doubt anybody will ever prove anything.

<comment><USER24> The problem is that we never had a regulated internet monopoly.

The government made AT&T and Dominion Virgina Power run telephone and powerlines to everyone, but in exchange there was legally no competition.

Now the government wants competition, but that means there is nobody on the hook to subsidize this guys internet connection.

It is probably more efficient to just install LTE instead. Running fiber to every farm house is a waste of money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> How about wireless? It is good enough for many cases. Especially on country side without interference from other users.

I would like to offer two stories:

\- Czech Republic before 2005 had really bad internet service. Single telecommunication company had monopoly. It only offered expensive dial-up and very slow ADSL. So it gave rise to community driven internet providers based on WIFI. They even made their own hardware based on laser diods. The biggest community network had about 500K users.

\- Ireland around 2010 had (and still has) very bad internet access. Goverment gave free license to new mobile phone operator which used exclusively 3G networks. One of the conditions was to provide internet access over phone for montly fee 20 Euro. Many people are now using phone as their main connection (I know case where monthly traffic was 44GB without any complain from provider).

<comment><USER26> Here in the states, Comcast cable modems/routers automatically create a "public" wifi hotspot in your home by default, so the infrastructure for a large wifi network exists in many places. The catch is, for the public to join the wifi network they must have a Comcast account in good standing. I can only assume based on Comcast's intent to build "the largest public (private) wifi network" themselves and the recent legislative attacks against community/public broadband networks that attempting to create a truly public wifi network using any of the available broadband providers as a backing service would be a Bad Idea. Anecdotally, the wireless broadband providers here are also a joke.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> [http://broadbandnow.com/Pennsylvania/Pittsburgh](http://broadbandnow.com/Pennsylvania/Pittsburgh) Looks like it's pretty decent, but everywhere I've lived so far (which has been in quite a bit of the city in the past 4 years) has not had access to FiOS. In my apt right now I only have access to Verizon DSL because Comcast canceled my account because I wanted to downgrade. (Their sales staff could only upgrade, status quo, or cancel outright -- not downgrade.)

Also, [http://broadbandnow.com/Pennsylvania](http://broadbandnow.com/Pennsylvania) claims that 90% of people have access to 100mb service in my county. 1) No. 2) "Access" doesn't mean at any price anyone but a business can afford.

</comment><comment><USER28> I am one of these 39M Americans. My sole provider is AT&T through a 6mbps DSL line. I live in Charlotte, NC within 20 minutes of the center of the city.

It's unfortunate that I live on a more rural road where there's an approximate 1 to 1.5 mile stretch of road with absolutely no houses. Beyond that, my street has only 20 houses after this stretch. This is definitely off-putting for carriers to install new lines down to us because they're likely to not see ROI foreeeever.

I really don't know what to do. Satellite is currently unacceptable with the bandwidth caps and latency.

Does anybody have any suggestions? I've contacted all of the major providers looking to get updates to our area.

<comment><USER3> What's your LTE situation look like? Also, how do you like your neighbors? It might be worth someone's while to run fiber out there if they could guarantee they'd have 100% uptake to those other houses.

<comment><USER28> LTE is spotty. Looking at coverage maps, it does some interesting things and covers half of our street but our house remains uncovered for the most part.

I don't know that I could get 100% uptake, but I could definitely get 50%. At one point I read that they have cutoffs of, say, a minimum of 10 houses to qualify for serviceability. I think this is an attainable number. There's actually another 20 or so homes at the beginning of the road that I believe to be unserviceable too.

Is there a way to contact the NTIA regarding their BTOP program? I'd personally be interested in seeing where they're investing their money given North Carolina took in a very large chunk ($150M). I'm all for trying to strong arm this until I get better service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> >More than 39M Americans Only Have Access to 1 Wired Broadband Provider

And those who have more than 1 are served by an oligopoly who overcharge for mediocre (at best) service.

Are the few cities with municipal broadband or Google Fiber seeing better service and prices?

<comment><USER30> Yes! Dramatically improved services and pricing from Comcast and Time Warner have followed Google fiber and municipal broadband wherever they pop up. Imagine that...

Sources:

[http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Comcast-Fights-Google- Fib...](http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Comcast-Fights-Google-Fiber-in- Provo-With-New-Pricing-125390)

[http://www.techrepublic.com/article/comcast-time-warner- take...](http://www.techrepublic.com/article/comcast-time-warner-take-on- google-fiber-in-kansas-city-can-the-incumbents-compete/)

[http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/pressured-by-google- fiber-t...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/pressured-by-google-fiber-time- warner-ups-speeds-slashes-rates/)

[http://www.provobuzz.com/comcast-makes-pathetic-attempt- to-b...](http://www.provobuzz.com/comcast-makes-pathetic-attempt-to-battle- google-fiber/)

[http://www.muninetworks.org/content/comcast-reacts-google- fi...](http://www.muninetworks.org/content/comcast-reacts-google-fiber-provo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm in this group and it seriously blows. Windstream DSL is my only option for wired internet. During the daytime, my speed is usually around the advertised 6mb down/0.75 up. But in the evenings and on weekends, I frequently see it drop to 0.5/0.1 or less. During the past year I've had a dozen or more outages, including two that lasted for a day or more.

When I want to download something quickly (or just open a web page some evenings), I tether to my cellphone which thankfully has unlimited LTE service because I've refused to sign a new contract. (Speeds are around ~18/5 if I put the phone in my front window.)

A guy working at Time Warner (which provides 50mb service about 0.5 miles from my house) said it would cost around $22k for them to wire up my neighborhood and that was too much for them.

After that, I've started looking into what it would take to run my own fiber lines to my neighborhood. It looks like it'd cost me that much or more, which is not an insurmountable amount, but it is significant. And I'm not sure if there's any way I could ever hope to make it profitable.

Edit: Oh, and I forgot to mention: my price has gone up twice during the past year - I'm now paying ~$65/month.

Second edit: I just realized that my service doesn't qualify as "broadband", even under the FCC's _old_ definition. I have zero wired broadband providers available.

<comment><USER32> How many people are in your neighborhood? Perhaps you could crowdfund part of it and say, "We will pay you X to wire up our neighborhood ...", and defray the cost enough to make it viable.

<comment><USER31> Yea, I've tried that - no luck so far, but I haven't given up on the idea.

I usually consider "my neighborhood" to be the ~0.75 mile road that I live on, which is about 18 single-family homes. I've met just about everyone, but I've only lived here for ~1 year, so I wouldn't say that I know anyone really well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Austinite here. Here's what's available to us:

Time Warner is the most available and is the only cable option for many people.

Grande Communications is available in a few, selected areas.

Google Fiber is slowly becoming available across the city, one neighborhood at a time, but is not available to most at the moment.

AT&T U-verse is also an option, but the impression I've gotten is that Time Warner is still much faster.

<comment><USER34> The biggest bullshite in Austin is that now that Google rolls into town, Time Warner and AT&T are scared, so now they are complimentary upgrading everyone. Yes they may have made recent upgrades too, but it takes someone like Google to make them provide something better.

And even though I got a complimentary upgrade to 300mbps down, it's capping out at 100...

<comment><USER35> >And even though I got a complimentary upgrade to 300mbps down, it's capping out at 100...

Isn't a 100 Mbit router that is the bottleneck? Be sure to have Gigabit Ethernet support in your modem/router as well as your computer. Sorry if I'm stating the obvious!

<comment><USER34> That's a good question - I believe my router is good up to 300mbps but I'll double check!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> In DC in theory you have 3 providers but in practice that's not how it works. Even though my neighbors had RCN or Verizon they could not serve me. I ended up stuck with Comcast and everything this implies. Then I moved to another place, just a round-robin, now I'm stuck with Verizon.

</comment><comment><USER16> This article was based on the OLD definition of broadband and that included DSL as a wired provider.

When the FCC releases it's 2014 dataset we'll re-release this same report and apply the new definition. (My gut says the results will be much different)

Also in using the site if you find that your zip is vastly inaccurate (lots of areas in PA that we're investigating) drop us a note here or via help [at] broadbandnow.com and we'll dig into the data.

You can check your zip here: [http://broadbandnow.com/search](http://broadbandnow.com/search)

Our goal is to help make shopping for broadband easier.

It's a big undertaking as the industry leverages it's opaqueness to charge higher prices, but hopefully we can bring more transparency to the marketplace.

</comment><comment><USER37> Greetings from beautiful Cedar Key, Florida. Bright House Networks will take your order for 90Mbps cablemodem, but the installer who eventually comes out will tell you that they don't do cablemodem here. AT&T will sell you 3Mbps (yes that's a 3) DSL that has horrendous packet loss and dropouts. There are no WISPs, although expensive LTE service is really good. Fortunately this is an area that is eligible for Exede Satellite Internet's Freedom plan, which is enough for work, google hangouts, Netflix, and more. TL;DR zero reliable wired providers of any sort, and one terrible one.

[Disclaimer: Do not interpret this as a complaint, I knew what I was getting into when I moved here, and I do love this place for a lot of reasons]

</comment><comment><USER38> Yep. I live right outside Chicago. Comcast is the only game in town... well that is a lie. You can also get at&t which offers lightning fast speeds upwards to 1.5mb for THE SAME PRICE as comcasts 16MB offering. Wooo competition!

</comment><comment><USER39> In my neighborhood in Brooklyn, It seemed I could choose from some pretty slow DSL from Verizon or cable Time Warner (turns out to be pretty slow a lot of the time). Then I found a smaller company offering much faster Fiber connections for the same prices as the DSL or Cable. So I called them up, and while they do service our street, they are specifically not allowed to service our house. I assumed the worst—two companies dividing up territory. Ended up with some pretty terrible Cable internet that gets decent speeds around 1AM when I am either asleep or out of the house. Rest of the time it crawls.

</comment><comment><USER40> And it gets worse...

As critical services move to the Internet, and we become reliant on IoT and cloud for our day-to-day, including emergency communication, many residences and businesses will need access to at least _two_ permanent connections because we will need 99.999 uptime (and some programmable CPE to abstract the user from switching between the providers when one is down or degraded).

This means even two broadband providers will not always be sufficient. Many of us will need at least four total (true) broadband providers: 2+ wired 2+ wireless to then choose from in truly healthy, competitive enviro...

<comment><USER12> Counterwise, you've just illustrated why I pay absolutely no attention to the IoT and will be surprised if it really gets anywhere any time soon (like, probably within my lifetime, assume a quarter century), and make sure nothing bad will happen when my rock solid AT&T DSL does occasionally go down.

Heck, Heinlein discussed this sort of thing in his 1966 _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Technically I could get DSL, but their bandwidth isn't really broadband.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm actually surprised that that minimum is as low as 39 million.

</comment><comment><USER43> Access is relatively. Eg. I only found out there is a second provider after I had signed the long term contract and the tech was physically installing it. (he mentioned the other provider during troubleshooting)

Then again their packages are a reasonable compromise between nice and the realities of Internet so it's cool. Eg. Gigabit access but only unmetered late at night. So if you need to pump a terabyte of data you can do so...at 1AM.

</comment><comment><USER44> My city is divided in to monopolies. Where I live specifically is Comcast. If I go to one of their "competitor's" websites and put in my address they will literally say "Sorry we don't service your area, Comcast does" and then auto- redirect me to a Comcast order page. There are no other choices. $80/mo for 25/3.

</comment><comment><USER45> Our building in downtown San Francisco is limited to 2 options that are both more the $700/month for 20Mbps up/down.

It is _insane_.

<comment><USER46> Does that not affect the rent/purchase value of apartments in that building? Or are the prices so high because of the location that it doesn't really have any impact?

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Not just the US. Where I'm based in (an only moderately rural part of) the south west UK, I have a choice of BT Broadband and literally no one else. (And, even more annoyingly, BT have posters on cable boxes around the smallish town I live in advertising that Fibre is available here when, in fact, it is most certainly not.)

</comment><comment><USER48> Says ~2% for Massachusetts... Makes me hate my single choice of Charter even more.

One of the worst providers I have ever experienced.

</comment><comment><USER49> I have access to NO Wired Broadband Provider, for over 4 years now. But hey, I'm not an American.

</comment><comment><USER50> I am one of them. Can't believe how Comcast has monopolized themselves in South Philadelphia. No choices. It's the most irritating thing ever, and will most likely make me move to another part of the city (or another city entirely) if they don't shape up.

<comment><USER51> I live in South Philadelphia (7th and Oregon), and while I have neither Comcast nor Verizon service, it seems like I can get either. They both mail me at least once a week, and occasionally come to my door, asking me to sign up. I investigated signing up for FIOS, but the cost was $90/month, and it just isn't worth that much to me. I have FIOS at work and it's fantastic, but my employer only pays $25/month for it.

From what I understand, Verizon is not expanding their FIOS service area anymore, because so many people are like me, and don't want to pay much for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Number seems low given there are many people still using AOL!

[http://www.businessinsider.com/millions-of-people-still- pay-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/millions-of-people-still-pay-for-aols- dial-up-service-yes-really-2015-2)

<comment><USER53> This is only how many _have access_ , not how many are using it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> #firstworldproblems ... It's as if people are not thankful to have good connectivity in the first place. Try living in a developing country, a heavily firewalled country, or on a boat for instance. You will learn to appreciate wired US broadband.

</comment><comment><USER55> What are typical DSL, ADSL and cable speed (up/down) in the US ? And how much does it cost ? With/without quota ?

For instance, in Europe I have a €27 subscription with unlimited data and 1.5megabytes/400kilobytes link. How does it compare ?

<comment><USER56> I pay Comcast (ewww I know, but my only choice) $60 for 105 down / 25 up (megabits) and basic TV (no hd, but I hardly even use it). Not terrible and I actually get these speeds when downloading stuff at 2am, but at peek hours I get sporadic connection loss and slow downs which makes gaming... frustrating to say the least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have access to 2, but one of them is very slow DSL. My subdivision technically has 2 cable providers, Comcast and Mediacom - but which one you can get is determined by your lot number. My neighbors can get Comcast and I can't.

</comment><comment><USER57> I have two, but only if you count DSL as one and DSL speeds do not begin to rival what the cable company offers. Cable wants 66 for what I have now and DSL is 49 for less than a third.

Do I really have a choice when one of them is so unappealing?

</comment><comment><USER58> And the situation won't get better with new net neutrality rules...

</comment><comment><USER59> That's really bad for a country like USA. In India we atleast have access > 5 providers in big cities.

( Though, yes I agree there is no Internet in villages, but it's slowly changing )

</comment><comment><USER60> According to the new definition of broadband, I now only have one. Cable. DSL drops off the chart as it's only 1.5 Mb/s.

</comment><comment><USER61> I'm in North Austin. The moment Google Fiber becomes available, I'm dumping Time-Warner. End of discussion.

</comment><comment><USER62> I only have one option, AT&T Uverse, and I live in a < 10 year old building in downtown San Francisco.

</comment><comment><USER63> The US is simply going about this all wrong.

I'm from Australia but live in New York and luckily my building has access to 2 providers (TWC and FIOS). My previous building only had TWC.

The problem with having a monopoly over providing retail Internet access is, well, that you have a monopoly. This is what infuriates me about the position of cable companies demanding Netflix pay to "push" bytes onto their networks.

No one is pushing anything. The customers of cable companies are _paying_ for Internet access and using that bandwidth to access services on the Internet that include Netflix.

The only reason cable companies even care is because Netflix provides competition to cable TV.

This situation can only exist because there are regional monopolies and for some reason the US just loves pretending regional monopolies are somehow "competition". Look at the Baby Bell situation as an earlier example.

In Australia, most people have only 1 physical option for fixed-line broadband, being Telstra, which was the government telco but has since been privatized. A few places also have cable Internet, typically over HFC, from Foxtel (owned by Telstra) or Optus.

I say "physical option" because the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission; think of it like the FTC/FCC but without quite so much regulatory capture) some years ago forced Telstra to provide space in exchanges for rivals to put DSLAMs to provide ADSL service. Telstra receives income from this and tries their damndest to undermine this situation but the fact is you can get Internet from a bunch of providers because of it.

10+ years ago ADSL2+ was pretty decent. Now it's a tad archaic. Many people don't have >2Mbps due to distance from the exchange.

The US solution is to encourage overbuilds. This is not a good solution. For one, it's a waste to deploy so many networks. For another, providers will cherry pick areas leaving many with still a single provider.

What you need is forced separation of retail and wholesale. I think the Australian example provides good evidence for this.

Wholesalers need to be denied the ability to sell to retail customers and they need to provide the same terms to all retailers.

The previous government in Australia brought in the NBN (Next generation Broadband Network), which was to be FTTH for the vast majority of Australians. Deployment was slow and only a few areas got hooked up. Despite what anyone says, the cost was going to be way more than the government quoted (A$42B originally). The new government has essentially decided on a mix of technologies, being FTTH, HFC and FTTN.

FTTN is fiber to a box in the street and then copper cable the rest of the way. With VDSL2, you can probably get to 100Mbps this way. Recent trials of G.Fast have I think raised this to 1Gbps. So it's not a terrible solution. It's certainly not FTTH however.

There is antitrust precedent for forced separation of services, like the Hollywood Antitrust case of 1948 [1]. This separated studios, distributors and theaters.

I don't know if Title II is the answer here either. US regulation has been pretty terrible (eg the breakup of AT&T into the Baby Bells).

Still, most people do have one electricity provider and utility rules do prevent them from price gouging since electricity, gas and water are essential services. I believe that Internet access will be---or arguably already is--an essential service in much the same way.

Whatever the case, building more networks is a pretty terrible solution to the problem.

[1] US vs Paramount Pictures Inc. (1948), [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pict...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc).

</comment><comment><USER64> First world problems.

</comment><comment><USER65> Well, this is roughly 13%. This isn't actually that bad.

</comment><comment><USER66> I've only recently discovered the horror that is AT&T U-Verse. Some buildings in Chicago have a contract with them so there's no escaping it. I can't imagine how bad it would be if a whole state only had one provider like this.

<comment><USER67> I totally agree with you.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What would it take to put Dart in browsers? - <AUTHOR>

Dart is a language developed at Google whose goal is "ultimately to replace JavaScript as the lingua franca of web development on the open web platform".
But after three years of being released, and despite being powerful, there aren't strong enough signs of adoption. It received a share of criticism from the industry[1], including the following comment from Mozilla's previous CEO Brendan Eich, who developed the Javascript language:
"I guarantee you that Apple and Microsoft (and Opera and Mozilla, but the first two are enough) will never embed the Dart VM."
Lukewarm adoption is always understandable of new things but this seems political. You'd hope big cos would give a fair shot to a better web and yet you get the semblance of a second Cold War.
If the big guys control the web and not even them can fix it, what would it take then to replace Javascript?
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dart_(programming_language)#Criticism <comment><USER2> It's hard to discount the effect of momentum at this stage. In some respects Google is just tardy to the party. The ECMAScript vs _whatever_ discussions happened circa 1995, the decisions have been made, and there's 20 years of near universal adoption there.

Then again...browsers will do what they need to do to keep users. If Dart allows devs to build things that aren't possible in js, then devs will lean on users to use browsers that are compatible with their newly built sites. Users flocking to a new browser will make the other browsers catch up.

So, it all starts with the capabilities of Dart itself. Make it kick javascript's butt, put it in chrome by default, and the rest should take care of itself.

</comment><comment><USER3> The best thing that could ever happen to the web is every browser using the same byte code interpreter and we can write web apps in any language that has a compiler to that byte code. Something as ubiquitous as the browser should not be dominated by a single programming language.

<comment><USER4> So asm.js? Its certainly getting close to that point.

<comment><USER3> asm.js is just a subset of JavaScript. It essentially just limits you to the parts of JS that can be optimized by compilers. Byte code is entirely different.

<comment><USER5> So, more like PNaCl?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fix it? Fix what? Javascript is continuously rising up to the challenges of the web. What's there to fix?

"The most dangerous thing to a new invention is a current product that is 'good enough'."

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder when Google will put Dart in Chrome (note: not Chromium where it's been for a while)?

<comment><USER8> Yes, Google needs to give developers a better reason to use it. Much faster performance in Chrome would help.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Prospective employer wants me to start ASAP. Is this a bad sign? - <AUTHOR> To keep it short: I've accepted a job offer from this company in a different country, which requires me to apply for a visa. I had told them back when I was interviewing that I had a prior notice of three months to fulfil. They said that they were going to set a tentative start date in three months plus a week. Fine.
Now that two months have passed, I've informed them that I will not realistically be able to start at the stipulated date, and that I'd need a couple more months. That was taken very badly by them. I was told that they'd give me another month at most.
This has gotten me very concerned, since I'm joining a considerably large team (5-10 people) in a large-ish company. On top of that they sent me all the paperwork via email plus a welcome message before I gave them a final clear verbal accept. That plus the fact that now they "need" me as soon as humanly possible left a bad taste in my mouth.
I haven't yet signed any physical documents. Should I bail out? <comment><USER2> The company presumably filled the position b/c they needed additional help in order to meet their goals. Being willing to wait 3 months in the first place seems like a great indication that they value you as a potential team member.

Delaying further makes it hard for them to plan and likely means they will have to delay some of their objectives.

</comment><comment><USER3> As an outsider, it strikes me that they were fine with the initial three-month notice period, and are only balking at asking for two more.

Asking someone you've already allowed three months to please honor the agreed- upon arrangement seems totally reasonable to me.

Are there non-employment-related extenuating circumstances that lead to the request for the extra two months, like a dying loved one?

<comment><AUTHOR> I completely agree that is reasonable they ask me to honour it, but at the same time when we agreed on the date, they told me that "they just needed some date" in order to aim for it, or something to that effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You were already given a lot of consideration with a 3 month out start date, in my opinion. I haven't seen that very often outside of executive-level positions myself, but my experience may be limited.

Asking for 5 months, with potentially another delay (you asked once, why not again?), would put me firmly (as a hiring manager) into "find another person" mode as you've proven unreliable before you even started. I didn't hire someone to not have them working, and 5 months is a _very_ long time in most tech endeavors.

<comment><AUTHOR> For what is worth, it's a position in Europe, and it's usual here for work agreements to set lengthy notice periods.

And while I agree with your argument, I was initially informed this wasn't a final date, but rather just something to aim for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You sound extremely out of touch and not serious. Why did you even interview for this job that you weren't ready to take for 6+ months?

</comment><comment><USER6> Companies, especially if they are not giant multinationals really need you to honor the hiring plan that you agreed to. They actually need you for a purpose, or they wouldn't have hired you. Everyone someones has things happen in the real world that affects working, but it's natural for them to want you to come.</comment>


Silicon Valley would be wise to follow China's lead - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/42daca9e-facc-11e7-9bfc-052cbba03425 <comment><AUTHOR> I can offer some anecdotes:

In a startup that's evolving its culture, there are a number of engineers who did very little engineering work but participating interviews all days long. They turned down a candidate if the candidate got promoted every two years or if the candidate produced "too many successful projects" in their opinion. Why? Well, in the eyes of these culture warriors, such candidates apparently "worked too hard", and therefore "were not good fit of the company's culture 2.0". They were also the same people who asked a few top performers to not work so hard because "they put too much pressure on co-workers". And in the same startup, droves of engineers would take weeks of sick days off because they "were traumatized by the outcome of US election".

In another so called hot tech company, if someone was promoted to a leadership position, be it of management ladder or technical ladder, the immediate question asked in employee all hands or in internal mailing list would be "why did not an XXX get promoted", where "XXX" can refer to any minority people. And huge rants from dozens if not hundreds of employees ensued. No critical review of the qualification of the promoted. No specific name of alternatives. No inspection of the demographics of the hiring pipeline or the employees. If the promoted is not of XXX, then by default there's a diversity problem. By default there's an equality problem. By default there's an elitism problem.</comment>


The Fallacy of "Good" Slave Owners - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/discourse/the-fallacy-of-good-slave-owners-7dd2ea2dad2f <comment><USER2> During that period of time and over the course of history, slavery was normal and a regular part of life. Was it right? of course not, but to single out the US as somehow different than the founding of every other nation is dishonest and only there to add to our current outrage culture.

The US was founded on great principles..and to somehow discount everything that it stood for at the time and everything it's become (less racism and more freedom than almost any other nation) is evil and really makes me question the motive of the author.

Does the author forget the civil war we fought where hundreds of thousands of non-slaves died for the rights of slaves?

"In truth, it was a protectionist measure to increase the value of domestic slaves in areas with an abundance like his native Virginia and Maryland to the detriment of states like South Carolina who imported the bulk of their slaves"

Jefferson wanted to end the international slave trade and you try to spin it as some sort of a scheme to enrich himself. You have no idea what he was thinking or his intentions. This is the sort of political spin that makes me detest articles like this.

Yes, slavery was bad. Every rational person agrees. After a century, we really need to move on from it or we will never grow as a nation.

My wife's relatives were slaves brought in from China and worked on our railroads. I never see any articles about it. Why? Because Asians aren't considered important enough minorities?

<comment><USER3> In fact, during that period, about a million Europeans were enslaved by Arabs [1].

But _curiously_ , that's rarely brought up. In fact, it's even mostly been purged from wikipedia's entry on the Arab slave trade: "Muslims also enslaved Europeans. According to Robert Davis, between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured between the 16th and 19th centuries by Barbary corsairs, who were vassals of the Ottoman Empire, and sold as slaves." is present in [1,2], but absent in [3].

I come from a region that had to deal with centuries of Ottoman raids, so it is hard to stomach how [4] phrases it as if it was some sort of mutual trade, and makes no mention of the pillaging and blood tax and using Europeans captured as children as soldiers to then raid for _more_ slaves.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_slave_trade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_slave_trade)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arab_slave_trade&...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arab_slave_trade&oldid=778777118)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade)

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade#European_slav...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade#European_slaves)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What (obscure?) areas of tech are engaging, sane, and incredibly stable? - <AUTHOR> I'd like to know where to look to completely sidestep the breakneck rat race to the bottom of mainstream technology.
Where would I find technical environments defined by the following qualities?
- Stability in the long term: 90% of the mental models being taught today will still be being leveraged 10 to 15 (or more - 20? 30? :D) years down the track, possibly even using the same stack/systems/operational techniques
- Operational sanity: technical and business practices don't distractingly violate whatever would contextually make common sense and impede natural flow; and political issues, if they must occur, are managed well
- Genuine engagement: a careful balance of tooling and policy means that only minimal overhead is necessary to achieve visible improvement and change, meaning enough time and mental energy are available to make a meaningful difference somewhere many times per working day
See my comment "It seems to me that the technology..." for more info (it wouldn't fit here) <comment><USER2> This is a really great question as was the 'unfashionable' language thread. My intuition is that those quiet legacy country roads are out there. Slower paced may also be found in modern industries. I would like to be ready to offer interesting solutions or services in niches where most people don't think of working.

Health care is one place with potential though it may only fit some of your criteria. It's been a while since I've worked in HC but things don't appear to have changed much. It was pretty cool to make a 7 figure difference with a little SQL and TCL for a local clinic where I worked as a DBA. Lots of opportunities to make people's day to day lives easier, too. No need for the latest language either.

Instead of learning the latest popular language, what I've decided to do is start learning things that sound interesting. I've almost finished Little Schemer, for example. I'm working through Coding the Matrix to get my math up to speed. The Machine Learning course on Coursera was inspiring. After Little Schemer the rest of the "Little" books, Starting Forth, SICP, and others, are on the agenda.

I'm also wondering if Life Sciences might have some interesting opportunities.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _I would like to be ready to offer interesting solutions or services in > niches where most people don 't think of working._

This is a really good point; I was actually coming from the perspective of knowing where to look to find a[n existing] predictable work environment, but standing alone (or with a small group) and offering a stable service might be an even better balance, thanks to the more malleable culture. Hmm...

> _Health care is one place with potential though it may only fit some of your > criteria._

If I can avoid the corruption (sadly inevitable, with the boggling financial scales involved) and I was in a clearly politically defined environment that might work.

> _It was pretty cool to make a 7 figure difference with a little SQL and TCL > for a local clinic where I worked as a DBA._

Wow, cool. High-impact limited-radius work sounds like a lot of fun :D

> _Lots of opportunities to make people 's day to day lives easier, too._

Yeah :D especially in the UI/UX area: [https://medium.com/tragic-design/how- bad-ux-killed-jenny-ef9...](https://medium.com/tragic-design/how-bad-ux- killed-jenny-ef915419879e) [https://medium.com/swlh/designers-healthcare- needs-you-stat-...](https://medium.com/swlh/designers-healthcare-needs-you- stat-cdeb1ca7f9b9) (even just [https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Amedium.com+healthcare...](https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Amedium.com+healthcare+ui+ux))

> _No need for the latest language either._

Which is great - if I'm not _required_ to hold on and keep up, I can learn stuff on the side at a comfortable pace, and onboard useful tech in situations where it would really count, when I have enough competence to architect with it well. (That's my main fear with a mainstream job - being expected to continuously sign off on designs I don't fully grok.)

> _Instead of learning the latest popular language, what I 've decided to do > is start learning things that sound interesting._

We're all at a different place mentally, etc; you're completely right, following the pack to learn the latest language is inefficient. (And "I need to learn the latest language" sounds ridiculous on the surface!)

> _I 've almost finished Little Schemer, for example. I'm working through > Coding the Matrix to get my math up to speed. The Machine Learning course on > Coursera was inspiring. After Little Schemer the rest of the "Little" books, > Starting Forth, SICP, and others, are on the agenda._

TIL about CtM and ML, I'll look into those! I've actually been looking at Forth myself; its philosophy ([http://www.ultratechnology.com/method.htm](http://www.ultratechnology.com/method.htm)) and operational model ([http://toddbot.blogspot.be/2014/01/the-ide-called- forth-or-f...](http://toddbot.blogspot.be/2014/01/the-ide-called-forth-or- forth-i-wish-i.html)) are the most interesting I've yet found in a language. [http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lang/forth.html](http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/lang/forth.html) is a fun, oddball anecdotal intro (and a site worth browsing as far as it will go - gems inside :P), and you may also be interested in [http://thinking- forth.sourceforge.net](http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net) and [https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Mako](https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Mako). (I have about ~20 more Forth bookmarks so far.)

> _I 'm also wondering if Life Sciences might have some interesting > opportunities._

That might be interesting to explore. There was a thread on here recently that noted that developments are badly needed to help implement theoretical and research work, and while some of that would probably be quite fast-paced, something like this (depending on the work on a case-by-case basis, really) could be a pretty predictable work environment.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the links! I'm intending to get Thinking Forth in hard copy one of these days. Though I've read and enjoyed the pdf.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It seems to me that the technology industry is increasingly focused solely on rapidly moving targets that constantly change specification at dizzying (even infuriating) rates, and my perspective as a hobbyist outsider is that developers are expected to figure out how to handle the breakneck pace and keep up, or go home because there simply isn't anything available if you can't make 65mi/h work for you.

The Web is easily the worst offender here: it seems to be stuck architecturally in a perpetual super-tight loop-the-loop of the "initial client design refinement" phase. It's as though nobody thinks it's possible to have forward change unless _everyone_ maintains a constant state of being tensed and ready to pounce on and adapt to the next big thing. (Imagine if Web standards had to go through the RFC process and the bureaucratic noise was rate-limited out of the equation because nobody had time for it. That would be nice...)

This is in part due to the frenetic, rabid competitiveness the Web enables, but regardless of the cause(s), developers are ultimately running themselves raw in a breakneck race to "nirvana" driven by the speed of the technology industry. The most upvoted comments on "Ask HN: How happy are you working as a programmer?" ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11009956](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11009956)) strongly suggest that burnout is widely resonated with. (That thread also provided valuable insight on how to articulate my own thoughts.)

I've been wondering for a while now: surely there are some some slower-paced quiet country roads to be found out there...?

As one example, for a few months I've been considering studying FORTRAN, COBOL, APL, Forth, etc, so I can position myself to work on legacy systems. Looking at "Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming language?" ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11001693](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11001693)), that would seem to be a good idea, if the unilaterally positive opinions in that thread are anything to go by. (Oh, add Object Pascal to that list!)

PS: I ask the above soley out of general curiosity for my own part, but FWIW, the rules ([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)) say that job ads cannot be submitted as stories... there's no such restriction on comments :)

PPS. My OP is exactly 1000 chars, the title exactly 80 chars. For some reason I think this is really neat. lol</comment>


Bring Your Custom Image to DigitalOcean - <AUTHOR> https://blog.digitalocean.com/custom-images/ <comment><USER2> A neat feature, though it'd be really nice to get the sort-of opposite and be able to easily download our droplet snapshots or backups to be able to store or run locally as needed.

<comment><USER3> Lots of hosts don't want to let you do that, so you can't port your images to other hosts.

That said you can use rsync to transfer the contents of a remote system to a local-snapshot if you wish. It won't cope with changes made during the run of the rsync, but if you coordinate you can migrate easily with this approach if you wish.

<comment><USER4> Actually I have used this method for cross-country migration of vms to a new datacenter. You have to exclude /dev and /proc at a minimum, then run rsync twice or more. Downtime was less than a minute, the time spent to reboot the vm and ensure it came up properly.

<comment><USER3> I've done it myself, and have the process pretty well memorized now. As you say if you want to rsync "/" you need to exclude /proc, /sys, & /dev.

Then on the new install you want to remove references to MAC address of any NIC that udev might have saved, update the hostname, IP, and similar static details.

Finally ensure that your bootloader is correct, and that you don't refer to outdated fileystem UIDs, by either updating them or using device-names instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is great news for making use of OpenBSD and other non-native OS. Most hosting I've used doesn't support OpenBSD or any other *BSD.

<comment><USER6> BSD is one of those things Ive heard of but know nothing about. What are the pros and cons of choosing BSD over something like Linux?

<comment><USER7> BSD has a great firewall, it's usually more integrated than Linux (for certain definitions of "integrated"), and some argue that it's more secure/stable. Some argue that the BSD license is superior. Hardware support and software availability tend to be more hit-or-miss. N.B.: I do not use BSD.

<comment><USER8> I run my web servers using FreeBSD on Digital Ocean.

Not to get into a whole thing about it, but Linux just refers to the kernel; various groups package the kernel with user-land stuff to create distributions: Ubuntu, Debian, Arch, etc.

FreeBSD is a unified operating system that's developed, tested and released as a unit; they take responsibility for the entire stack and architectures: amd64, i386, powerpc, powerpc64, sparc64, armv6, and aarch64.

In general, FreeBSD (and to my knowledge, the other BSDs) are very stable, memory efficient, supports high throughput, and are quite secure. Famously I suppose, Netflix runs their entire infrastructure on FreeBSD and contributes back lots of code. The base of Apple's macOS is a FreeBSD variant called Darwin.

The narrative has been that FreeBSD is fabulous for servers and the like but not as good for desktops and laptops, due to it not having as broad driver support for the latest PC hardware. My understanding that's starting to change with BSDs specifically focused on desktop use; see [https://trueos.org](https://trueos.org).

There's a lot more; see [https://www.freebsd.org/advocacy/whyusefreebsd.html](https://www.freebsd.org/advocacy/whyusefreebsd.html)

<comment><USER9> > FreeBSD is a unified operating system that's developed, tested and released > as a unit

When people mention this, it doesn't mean Linux ships with a kernel and everyone putting random things on top but Linux is also rigorously tested by distribution vendors and are well streamlined throughout, so I don't think that's much of a selling point for BSD.

What matters for average users are that they can google their problems easily and they don't get hit by edge cases that they can't easily solve.

None of the UNIX except macOS are really good at desktop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why only ext3/4 filesystems? Why not XFS?

<comment><USER11> They likely need to be able to mount your filesystem for some of their features to work. That's how they can reset your root password, write out network configs, etc etc.

<comment><USER12> Network configs are written out via cloud-init last I checked, hence the requirements on one of the variants.

Also: You must add an SSH key when creating a Droplets from a custom image. These Droplets have password authentication disabled by default and it's not possible to use the control panel to generate or reset the root password.

[https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/images/custom- images/overv...](https://www.digitalocean.com/docs/images/custom- images/overview/#limits)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Vultr also offers this, and has for years. [https://www.vultr.com/features/uploadiso/](https://www.vultr.com/features/uploadiso/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Though I haven't used DigitalOcean, I always thought it to be pretty equivalent to Linode, being a direct competitor and all. I'm kind of surprised this is a new feature for DO. I installed NixOS on a Linode server a couple years back, and Linode has no explicit support for it. Am I to understand that it was impossible to install custom OSes in DO before, or does this simply make it easier?

</comment><comment><USER15> Using regular Linux tools you are even able to bootstrap Windows on Digital Ocean (or any kvm vps): [https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Windows_7_Installer_on_KVM_Li...](https://raymii.org/s/tutorials/Windows_7_Installer_on_KVM_Linux_VPS_Digital_Ocean.html)

This could be done without custom images. Now it will be easier.

</comment><comment><USER16> Excellent. This should mean no more instability with DigitalOcean as a deploy target for NixOps.

</comment><comment><USER17> Faaaaantastic. I've been bootstrapping Alpine on top of Debian for a while now.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wonder if this is compatible with unikernals like MirageOS? [https://mirage.io](https://mirage.io)

<comment><USER19> > Any Linux OS that supports ext3/4 file systems and has cloudinit 0.7.7, > cloudbase-init, coreos-cloudinit, ignition, or bsd-cloudinit

So my guess is no.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If anyone from DO is reading, automated deployment and administration with Nixops is at the top of my wish list.

</comment><comment><USER21> Can we share custom images with others?

</comment><comment><USER22> i remember DO has been promising to deliver custom image since like more than 5 years ago.

glad to see it finally happens

<comment><USER23> aren't they like, 6 years old?

<comment><USER22> Founded June 24, 2011; 7 years ago

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't really see how this is newsworthy... I've been purchasing virtualization and cloud services from a variety of smaller providers for years -- without fail, all of them are more than happy to provision custom images. My current provider, Reprise Hosting, accepts custom images without extra fees and without caveats to their SLA.

<comment><USER25> It's a blog announcing a new feature for their platform. It's not like they are taking an ad out on the New York times.

<comment><USER26> You can still advertise without taking an ad out in the New York Times, and this post is clearly advertising.

<comment><USER27> Its their own blog. I think its ok to be writing about every feature they build on the blog even if its a simple feature.

<comment><USER28> Yes. The question is if it should be on HN or not.

<comment><USER29> Nvidia announces new graphics cards. Should it be on HN?

Apple announces new iPhone, listing specs. Should it be on HN?

Google announces new service. Should it be on HN?

In general, if it's something tech related that the community finds interesting, I don't see why not.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


SkypeIn - Your Personal Online Number - <AUTHOR> http://www.skype.com/intl/en/allfeatures/onlinenumber/

<comment><USER2> Hey I must be ahead of the curve. I have a Skype UK number (Leeds) and amusingly, a Compton number in the USA - one of the few Californian numbers left.

Great for business - my American customers can phone me in 'Compton'.</comment>


Rhode Island Says Police Can Decloak Anonymous People Online - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110620/12050914769/rhode-island-says-police-can-decloak-anonymous-people-online-if-they-find-them-offensive.shtml

<comment><USER2> _While much of the bill is targeted at uncovering those involved in child porn_

Of course. And, uncovering someone as a user or creator of child pornography without having a trial... nothing could go wrong there.

<comment><USER3> What way of arresting someone so that they can be brought to trial do you propose that never uncovers their crimes? It is absolutely necessary to gather evidence and, at some point, accuse someone of a crime if they are to be brought to trial. The problem is when the identity and alleged crime of an individual are publicized before they are found guilty.

<comment><USER4> I kinda take issue with any law that allows collection of evidence without a Warrant. If you're looking for evidence, you had better have enough cause to get a warrant from a judge. Else, that's witch-hunting.

<comment><USER2> That was my point. Thanks for stepping and clarifying.

<comment><USER3> Fair enough; that makes perfect sense (and you can consider my earlier comment retracted). I suppose that I didn't get that you were using trial to indicate the process of obtaining a warrant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe not the best title, the "...if they find them offensive" is the most interesting part. Before I clicked I thought the hive mind in Rhode Island had some space age technology to identify hackers as the click of a button.

</comment><comment><USER6> From Rhode Island: '...let police get names and other identifying information from service providers for online speech that they find to be "offensive"...'

From The Constitution: "...or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech..."

From The Supreme Court: "In Talley v. California, 362 U.S. 60 (1960), the Court struck down a Los Angeles city ordinance that made it a crime to distribute anonymous pamphlets. In McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, 514 U.S. 334 (1995), the Court struck down an Ohio statute that made it a crime to distribute anonymous campaign literature. However, in Meese v. Keene,, 481 U.S. 465 (1987), the Court upheld the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, under which several Canadian films were defined as "political propaganda," requiring their sponsors to be identified."[1]

It would appear there is more case law in support of protecting the constitution however this is not a guarantee. The Rhode Island law is broad enough to be used in situations outside of the spirit it is being sold under: "Protect the Children!"

While I'm all for protecting those who can not protect themselves we as a country must start demanding that our law makers enact laws where the letters match the spirit.

If you want to pass laws to stop pedophilia then write laws that says "<insert broad law text here> where such evidence can be used only within the scope of an investigation and prosecution of crimes under <insert the section from the current pedophilia laws that define what it is>"

Is that so difficult?

The courts enjoy interrupting the 'letter of the law' and not the spirit. From my perspective this is false advertisement to each supporting law makers constituents. We have an entire government agency, the FTC, that is devoted to protecting consumers against these sort of things [2][3][4] but they only investigate private individuals and corporations.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_S...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Political_speech)

[2] [http://news.cnet.com/FTC-settles-online-false-advertising- ca...](http://news.cnet.com/FTC-settles-online-false-advertising- cases/2100-1017_3-239828.html)

[3] <http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2010/07/nestle.shtm>

[4] [http://www.winston.com/index.cfm?contentid=34&itemid=377...](http://www.winston.com/index.cfm?contentid=34&itemid=3772)

</comment><comment><USER7> >"administrative subpoena"

trickling down of "national security letter" concept.

</comment><comment><USER8> Me to police: You first.

<comment><USER9> So, how do you feel about LulzSec's recent op against Arizona?

<comment><USER10> That wasn't a lulzsec op, they said that the info came from an anon, lulz just released it for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That is going to be abused TO DEATH.

<comment><USER12> > That is going to be abused TO DEATH.

That abuse is the intent.

Whenever someone uses the "child porn" excuse, they're trying to get something that they shouldn't have.

Disagree? Provide three counter-examples.</comment></comment>


What I learned from time away from the Internet and email - <AUTHOR> http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/what-i-learned-from-time-away-from-the-internet-and-email/ <comment><USER2> "email just isn't scalable." Well of course not! But is that a reason not to respond to people? No. One of the rudest behaviors I've seen from people is not responding to email. I get just as much email as you - promise! - but I really do try to respond to everything. If you're not going to respond, then for the love of god, have an auto-reply that says so.

Note: I'm not accusing Mr. Cutts of not responding to emails... only that I notice it happening a lot with other people, ESPECIALLY googlers for some reason.

<comment><USER3> I've tried auto-replies. People get even more offended by that. Here's someone that posted after getting an auto-reply in 2007: [http://www.ginside.com/2007/1186/matt-cutts-doesnt- respond-t...](http://www.ginside.com/2007/1186/matt-cutts-doesnt-respond-to-e- mail-anymore/) . He was angry because he thought the battle against paid links was useless, and wanted me to email him back to justify our efforts on paid links. His conclusion? "When I met up with Matt at SES San Jose, he seemed like a cool guy, but I guess this [getting an auto-reply] proves my positive- assumptions wrong."

Don't get me wrong. I like Jonathan (the author of the blog) and stopped by his blog to leave a comment to answer his question.

But if you asked a neutral third party, "Which is better? To spend your time working on new algorithms for paid links? To write blog posts or make videos about paid links? Or to reply to emails justifying working on paid links?" I think the the neutral party would put replying to emails about paid links at the bottom of the priority list.

And the amount of email at Google is pretty epic. Even after trying to reduce my email load through all the conventional methods like unsubscribing from newsletters, my mail storage is over 50 gigabytes.

So there may not be a good conventional answer to the email issue for me. I really don't want to be rude by not responding to emails, but I also believe I should also be working on the biggest-impact things I can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're on a Mac and are rather addicted to these sorts of websites, SelfControl (funny name) can be used to block sites for however long you want after some tweaking. I use it when I notice myself opening a new tab in the browser and instinctively going for the "r" or "h" keys.

I too notice that when I block these sorts of websites, even though I still have access on my phone, I start reading a lot more and getting more stuff done. Now that I think about it, I should try the 30 day challenge. The most I've gone is 15 days. Peace out!

<comment><USER5> /etc/hosts does the trick for me. I'm also noticing that whenever I am stuck solving a problem I open a new tab, starting to type one of my self-forbidden websites. Blocking it completely helps :)

I've banned social networking / news reading to my phone, so I'm only doing it when I have to wait, e.g. on a train.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Congrats to Matt for trying new stuff!

I'm a bit confused, though. I understand that making a video or publishing can help many more people than responding to emails. What I don't get is how you figure out what kinds of videos or other things to publish if you don't have regular contact with people outside of Google. Conferences? It seemed that Cutts was saying instead of talking to normal people, he'd just hang closer to all his good Googley buddies. That he heard about all important stuff through them anyway.

I don't know enough about what he does to know if that makes sense, and I'm not sure he meant it to come out that way. Just sounded weird.

<comment><USER3> I went ahead and updated the blog post to explain, but I'll include what I wrote here too. Sorry if I didn't explain that clearly. I still see what people are discussing on SEO blogs and on the Google webmaster forum. I know the most recent trends in how blackhats try to spam Google--that's my primary job, after all. I look through the questions and comments that people send me on Twitter. When I put out a call for webmaster video questions, I use Google Moderator so people can vote up questions that interest them. I keep an eye on what flavors of spam snake oil are being marketing to newbies on various forums ("I know Google pulled apart my last link network, but now try my Social Rank Tout Suite product! It will automate 100% of all of your link building!"). And lots of people at Google keep an eye open themselves and alert me if they see issues.

So I feel like I have a pretty good feel for the pulse of what people are talking about; it's just that I lack the time to have one-on-one conversations with every person that emails me.

</comment></comment><comment> daniel-levin On a tangent, one thing that caught my eye is: "or February, my wife and I are trying a gluten-free, wheat-free month to see what that's like."

In my opinion, this is one of the highest-leverage lifestyle modifications you can make. I started this in September 2012. In short, it helps with (chronic) rhinitis management - my sinuses are blocked less often and I am congested less frequently. Even though wheat-based foods aren't inherently much more calorific than others, I have found that my net caloric intake has been reduced by avoiding wheat-based foods. I replaced wheat-based foods with higher quality foods - like brown rice. Using this in conjunction with regular exercise, I have become healthier, more energised and motivated.

Starting a cycle of being healthy (exercising, eating correctly) initialises a self-sustaining feedback loop of motivation: once I started to see results (improved body composition, feeling more energetic) I became even more dedicated to this cycle of living healthily. Ceasing to eat gluten-based foods catalysed this for me.

<comment><USER7> If leaving out wheat helped your sinuses, it might be worth investigating if you have a Histamine intolerance (my wife has that, and the symptoms you described).

If you have indeed a Histamine intolerance, you'd know what other food to avoid (for example easily spoiled fruit like strawberries), and there are enzymes you can take if once you couldn't avoid such food.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Inspiring! I'm glad to have read it.

After posting this comment, I'm going to start something similar: reduce Internet usage to a minimum (checking health of my servers, etc.) for a week, and with the free time, de-clutter. OMG the clutter is killing me. All these little pieces of paper, things lying out, stuff I don't use... it's negatively impacting my life. So call it a kill two birds with one stone deal.

</comment><comment><USER9> Being away from the computer even for a couple of hours can make you aware of the grip it has on you.</comment>


Standard Notes – A Simple and Private Notes App - <AUTHOR> https://standardnotes.org/ <comment><USER2> I've been a fan of this product for quite a while, I self host a "standard file" server and make use of standard notes writing into it to keep my personal journal.

Getting everything up and running isn't difficult at all.

<comment><USER3> Care to share the steps you took? It proved to be near impossible to set up several months ago for me and others.

<comment><USER2> Hi! It's been a long time since I set it up and I haven't documented much of the process.

 _Infrastructure wise:_ \- It's your basic web app setup;

\- Cloud Load balancer with a static IP, listening on port 80 and 443 (presenting an SSL Certificate) and forwarding on this traffic to the webhead.

\- the webhead is a small cloud server which acts as Web Server/Application Server, communicating with a MySQL database backend (unfortunately this is a bit of a pet server, I don't have it's config written in code) \- Web Server listening on port 80 & 443 \- "standard file" listening locally on port 3000

\- the database is a MySQL Compatible cloud sql instance on GCP (cost savings can definitely be achieved here by hosting the database on the same compute engine server)

 _Setup:_ I set up a "standard file" server using the ruby server instructions. Though looking up on the state of the project it appears that "standard file" is now deprecated, the replacement is the "Syncing Server" \- this looks very much like the existing standard file server, the EC2-nginx documentation is the same ([https://github.com/standardfile/ruby- server](https://github.com/standardfile/ruby-server) & [https://docs.standardnotes.org/self- hosting/ec2-nginx](https://docs.standardnotes.org/self-hosting/ec2-nginx))

Most of my pain that i encountered was getting the ruby and passenger to work properly, but once I got ruby-bundler and stuff working it was mostly smooth sailing.

I've just updated my standard file server to the new 'syncing server' repo tonight and it was painless too;

\- I stopped the running service

\- git cloned the new repo

\- copied my .env file over to the new directory

\- changed the service to bind to tcp://127.0.0.1:3000

\- `bundle install --path vendor/bundle` - to pull down the required dependencies

\- `bundle exec rails db:migrate` - to migrate my existing database to the new schema (BACKUP YOUR DATABASE BEFORE DOING THIS - your database is your notes)

\- i modified the path of my systemd service and `systemctl daemon-reload` to update the cached unit files and with a quick restart it started and worked first time.

 _Differences from the Documented setup:_

\- Puma is configured to bind to port 3000 on the localhost: in config/puma.rb; add the following line:

      bind        ENV.fetch("BIND") { "tcp://127.0.0.1:3000" }

comment out this line:

      port        ENV.fetch("PORT") { 3000 }

\- OS: Ubuntu 18.04 instead of Amazon Linux AMI

\- Web Server: Apache, acting with the Passenger plugin as a reverse proxy (because I was already using it to front my website), and I already make use of Letsencrypt for the two domains served from this system, using a wildcard cert.

\- Service Management: I wrote a very barebones systemd unit to start and stop the ruby service (this needs updated to match the now current one i'm using) [https://github.com/Tsiklon/standard-file- unit/blob/master/st...](https://github.com/Tsiklon/standard-file- unit/blob/master/standard-file.service) I didn't use docker as I've not used it too much in anger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> An application that promotes its security, and then finding Two-factor authentication is behind the paywall... it shouldn't be a premium feature.

<comment><USER5> git clone the server and run your own instance if you don't want to pay.</comment></comment>


Harvesting: Seeking Markets with the Best/Easiest Returns - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/06/harvesting.html

<comment><USER2> I cannot believe why so many people are so enamored with Seth Goldin's grossly glorified common sense.

        * Word spreads.

No shit. Word of mouth, that is really important.

       * Needs are similar.

Wow you need to pick a market with multiple customers. Brilliant!!!

        * Budgets exist.

Make sure your Customers have money! Don't know if you guys know this, if your customers don't have money, they cannot pay you!

         * Barriers exist.

Who has not heard of barriers to entry? Well IMHO, barrier to entry from the technology standpoint is not that important. There are many programmer than can make twitter, youtube, wordpress clones...etc. Execution is more crucial

<comment><USER3> Once you've established yourself as a genius of some sort, you get to go all Zen, and write columns like 'Remember to tie your shoelaces because if you don't, you might trip - now, what are your business's shoelaces?' The more glaringly obvious your insights, the more you'll be lauded as someone who cares about 'the little guy' instead of some high-falutin' elitist. Journalists love this stuff because 'guru' articles write themselves...

 _In person, Godin is a chameleon, alternating between monkish calm and bursts of hyper-creativity. He looks at my voice recorder with amusement. 'Do you ever listen back to more than the first 15 minutes?' he asks, eyes a-twinkle. No, I sheepishly admit. [...]

As I leave, I feel a gentle hand on my arm. 'Your shoelace is untied,' says Godin. I look down and he's right: it is. I kneel to re-tie it, an almost automatic act; but as I stand up, a wave of realization bursts over me: _ this _is the lesson he's been trying to communicate for the last hour. And it's one that I'll never find in my voice recorder._

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd love to see a blog post that focuses on the 'barriers exist' point. Maybe some case studies.

I guess there are a range of levels of barriers to entry, and any example of high barrier to entry I can think of implies you've already done a lot of work yourself. Very often, this might be because of a previous job / study gave you some specific valuable domain knowledge, and / or contacts (eg google).

Other times not. For example, the sydney harbour bridge climb - there high barriers to entry here, they have a monpoly! but to get that monopoly they had to put in a lot of hard work convincing the relevant authorities to let them do it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Lame post -- was waiting for some examples of markets that have great word of mouth, and yet came up totally empty.</comment>


Leaf ML framework ends development - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mjhirn/tensorflow-wins-89b78b29aafb#.ndfvodxov <comment><USER2> What's really sad about this is that they had to give up Leaf because the whole thing was VC-backed. Commercial support is a huge part of open source software's viability.

I applaud their decision to pivot and shift their focus elsewhere to win. That said, the irony is too great for me not to mention: open sourcing is now recognized as a hugely democratizing force in the software world to upend commercial giants, yet it's commercial giants that can afford to invest in the long run and support open source projects (so that they can increase the sphere of their influence).

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing on HN. Rust community's discussion on Reddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/4ij2ub/googles_tensor...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/4ij2ub/googles_tensorflow_wins_leaf_loses/)

</comment><comment><USER4> They place an emphasis on Github star count, but that is a terrible usage metric. Leaf got a lot of stars because it got a lot of HN exposure, but at the same time Leaf had no users. Assumedly _that 's_ the real reason why they are stopping development.

Here are the metrics that matter.

Over the lifetime of the project:

\- 14 contributors

\- 40 issues opened

\- 161 forks

In the past month:

\- 7 issues opened

\- 6 PRs opened

In the past week:

\- 0 issues opened

\- 0 PRs opened

In other words, a ghost town. The lesson here is that a lot of HN exposure does not automatically convert into a lot of users.

<comment><USER3> Yes, we had trouble to attract the right community and convert the stars into recurrent contributions, as there was less overlap between the Rust and the general ML community than we anticipated. This bothered us a lot and played a role in our decision to suspend Leaf.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is sad. Diversity of implementations is a plus.</comment>


Writing a Faster Jsonnet Compiler (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://databricks.com/blog/2018/10/12/writing-a-faster-jsonnet-compiler.html <comment><USER2> Not mentioned is the official GoLang version of the Jsonnet compiler. [https://github.com/google/go-jsonnet](https://github.com/google/go-jsonnet)

In my experience the Go version is 10x faster than the original C++ implementation due to improvements. The only thing missing in the Go version is the formatter.

<comment><USER3> It's mentioned in passing a couple of times, so I assume they've tried it wasn't faster for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As someone who is new to configuration-based langages, how is Jsonnet different from Dhall? Do they fill the same niche? Does Jsonnet offer similar guarantee of termination of the config programs like DHall?

<comment><USER5> unlike DHall, Jsonnet is Turing complete and untyped.

In a way that might make it a bit easier to approach but harder to reason about your configs.

<comment><USER6> Termination is a red herring, the real problem you want to be worried about is configs that take more CPU / RAM than you have spare. Restricting to primitive recursion does not help there. See [https://landing.google.com/sre/workbook/chapters/configurati...](https://landing.google.com/sre/workbook/chapters/configuration- specifics/#guarding-against-abusive-configuration)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well it might be fast, but Java/Scala doesn't sound like it is very compact and easy to deploy. It results in a ~10MB jar file + the java runtime.

<comment><USER8> This can be somewhat mitigated by AOT compilation. Here's a link to some experiments from using SubstrateVM to create a self-contained executable from sjsonnet: [https://github.com/databricks/sjsonnet/issues/2](https://github.com/databricks/sjsonnet/issues/2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Jsonnet, not Jsonata. Damn, I was excited for a moment there. Well, it was an interesting article anyways.</comment>


Snowden tweets 156 characters, which is deleted; speculation re assassination - <AUTHOR> http://yournewswire.com/mysterious-tweet-sparks-fears-edward-snowden-is-missing-or-dead/ <comment><USER2> Non-sensational possible explanation: it's the checksum of a file he sent to a journalist or friend. He deleted the tweet because the receiver saw it.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/4wc9ep/huge_edw...](https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/4wc9ep/huge_edward_snowden_leak_incoming_he_just_posted/d65vcsm)

<comment><USER3> It's a sha256. It could definitely be a checksum for a file, although hashes like this is not an uncommon way to generate a large, unique password from a small string or phrase.

Most passwords can be easily brute forced. A 64-byte string is a lot harder to brute force.

I actually think a sha2 is a little bit weird for a file checksum. I would expect md5 or a regular sha1. Or simply send the file with a gpg signature to validate the integrity (provided he still has some sort of trusted public key). Either way any off-the-shelf Mac can generate and verify these checksums.

My guess is that Snowden is starting to feel homesick and wants to start the process of returning to the USA. That's why he said "It's time." The tweet could be a password or a code to something but I don't think it's meant to embarrass or expose anybody.

<comment><USER4> How do you know it's a sha256, beyond the length?

<comment><USER3> I don't know for sure. It's 64-length hex string (not 156 like a lot of people are reporting), the same output as a sha256 checksum.

Looks an awful lot like somebody opened up a terminal and typed in:

> $ echo -n "some password" | shasum -a 256

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Posted 19 hours ago[0] with a less sensationalist headline "Snowden tweets code without context then deletes."

[0][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12235563](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12235563)

<comment><AUTHOR> fair enough, but I think the coincidental timing with a torrent tracker crackdown was an interesting observation that was not captured in the prior posting.

in addition, he made a call for collaborators to contact him, which was then taken down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> First reported on 3 days ago:

[http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/whistleblower-edward-snowden- sparks...](http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/whistleblower-edward-snowden-sparks- curiosity-cryptic-tweet-its-time-1574308)

[http://sputniknews.com/science/20160803/1043913532/snowden-t...](http://sputniknews.com/science/20160803/1043913532/snowden- tweet-its-time.html)

And he's tweeted since, so it's a pretty good bet that he's not dead:

[https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/761609959213789184](https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/761609959213789184)

<comment><USER7> The 'cryptic' tweet was at 9:14pm and the one you linked is at ~1pm, so actually he hasn't tweeted since.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Mainstream media in Germany are now starting slowly to cover the topic (based on a DPA release):

[http://www.sueddeutsche.de/news/service/internet- mysterioese...](http://www.sueddeutsche.de/news/service/internet-mysterioeser- tweet-loest-spekulationen-ueber-snowden-aus-dpa.urn-newsml-dpa- com-20090101-160807-99-963959)

Greenwald tweets Snowden "is fine": [https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/761995125824360448](https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/761995125824360448)

Inquisitr: [http://www.inquisitr.com/3389936/edward-snowden-dead- mysteri...](http://www.inquisitr.com/3389936/edward-snowden-dead-mysterious- tweet-is-sending-conspiracy-theorists-into-a-meltdown/)

and well, yournewswire.com as a source - oh my.

</comment><comment><USER9> Wait. What?

Twitter's limit is 140 characters.

<comment><USER3> It's actually 64 characters long. The length of a sha2 hash. I had to count it myself to verify.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I tried to make the headline less sensationalistic; sorry I couldn't with the 80-character limit.

The article addresses what the 156-letter tweet means, whether it could be the dead-man code to the insurance files, and whether the recent torrent tracker crackdown could be related.

Of note: he _did_ tweet 22 hours ago, but since the tweet in question was deleted, I can't tell the chronology.

I hope he is ok, and this speculation is utterly wrong. The fact that it's utterly possible, though, speaks to how messed up things are.

[https://twitter.com/snowden](https://twitter.com/snowden)

<comment><USER7> the screenshot in the article shows the time as 9:14pm.

I assume that's Snowden's timezone, and not the viewers, I admit I dont know how twitter handles timezones.</comment></comment>


Verizon and AT&T Score in 700Mhz Auction - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2008/03/20/verizon-and-att-score-in-700mhz-auction/

<comment><USER2> I wonder if score is quite the word.

<comment><USER3> If Google had won, it would've been. Why hate on some billion dollar corporations, but not others?

<comment><USER4> Past behavior as a predictor of future behavior implies the winners will not innovate and will not be open. Not all billion dollar corporations are equal.</comment></comment></comment>


Startup Visa D.O.A., and Startup America Just a Giant Press Release? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/30/startup-visa-d-o-a-and-startup-america-just-a-giant-press-release/

<comment><USER2> I sent my immigration lawyer a link to [http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/14/finally-a-startup-visa- that...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/14/finally-a-startup-visa-that-works/) about 2 weeks ago and this was his response:

"Kulveer, from his lips to God's ears. Frankly, I don't see it happening...such is the gridlock in Congress, where immigration issues, any immigration issues, even sensible solutions to obvious problems like this one, tend to be held hostage to a mindset of 'once you've secured the southern border, we can talk - until then, don't bring us immigration issues to vote on'. The need is obvious, the solution good, but the environment fractured and hostile to the degree that makes those normal attributes of legislation not enough to see it through. No-one will be more pleased than me if I'm wrong!"

</comment><comment><USER3> The most unfortunate part of this is that 'the President would only support the Startup Visa in the context of "comprehensive immigration reform".'

If it is valuable to attract and retain the top entrepreneurial talent from around the world, we should enact that policy ASAP, without holding it captive to the political grenade of illegal immigration.

<comment><USER4> Or maybe not everyone has the same priorities as you. When I was living in the US, my top priority was comprehensive immigration reform so my fiance could have the right to work so we could live a normal life.

<comment><USER5> What is good for the country and good for us as individuals in the short term doesn't always line up. For a country to work well, one needs to look beyond his own needs. I think that immigration needs to be revamped, but it's a huge task, and it doesn't make sense to logjam all related issues.

The parent's point about political sensitivity is very important - it makes it much, much less likely to happen in the near future, and it doesn't improve the situation of that other bill very much. It's just not a strong enough motivator politically, because there aren't many voters in the startup community.

This is a strictly worse outcome, regardless of your priorities, unless your goal is to keep highly educated foreigners from staying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Business as usual in Washington. Anyone really surprised? Every time it looks like something good will come out of there, the politicians manage to screw it up with amazing precision and panache.

<comment><USER7> I can't believe you guys haven't figured it out yet. Who cares about startups? If you want this to get passed, just call it the Patriot Visa.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This piece doesn't make much sense to me. The first paragraph talked about how Obama is interested in emulating China's and India's focus on science and engineering. The second paragraph says the Startup America plan needs more substance: a way for foreign-born entrepreneurs to start companies here and a leveling of the playing field for entrepreneurs wanting to solve government problems.

I don't know about the situation in India, but here in China the barriers for foreign-born entrepreneurs starting companies and the barriers for entrepreneurs wanting to solve government problems are both very high. The US already has the comparative advantage in this regard. Isn't the real disadvantage that most Americans aren't very interested in science or engineering careers?

<comment><USER9> What he meant was that if those foreign entrepreneur could not stay in the US, they will go back to their own country to create jobs there. Therefore, the US would lose this entrepreneur along with the technology and the job he/she creates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If governments have to aggregate bills together because they are incapable of considering individual ones, do you really expect them to ever produce well- rounded pieces of legislation?

Looks like government can't scale.

<comment><USER11> My cynical take is that sometimes these things are packaged together, knowing they will fail, just so one party can use it as a negative campaigning tool in the next election: "Party X voted against <insert topic>"

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> From the end:

> There is not one example of a Government-sponsored tech cluster—anywhere in > the world—that has worked. Yet our leaders talks about clusters as if they > are the secret sauce for entrepreneurship.

Because startups are not real beneficiaries of tech cluster funding. These office parks end up filled with call centers and branch offices of large companies like IBM and Dell. They're effectively another subsidy for established firms with political influence.

</comment><comment><USER13> An advice to all Silicon Valley investors: get up off your asses and look elsewhere. Europe is especially teeming with great startups to fund.

</comment><comment><USER14> Wow, this is such a disappointment, I hope the people who screwed this up have as hard of jobs keeping their job as those of us trying to actually help this country by creating jobs.

</comment><comment><USER15> Is there a way to hack the political process to get this moving ? Can individual states bypass the federal government with some kind of visa ? Some law that this can piggyback on ?

<comment><USER16> No, individual states cannot issue visas. The border is controlled by the federal government (specifically, the Department of Homeland Security).

One thing you can do is sign up for votizen and send a message to your representatives here, however:

<https://www.votizen.com/issues/startupvisa/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Unfortunately the startup visa is dead and will stay dead for some time. The only way something like this will get through is by piggybacking it onto some other bill.</comment>