As Egypt Erupts, Al Jazeera Offers Its News for Free to Other Networks - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/01/al-jazeera-egypt/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER3> I'm curious why Al Jazeera has such a negative reputation in the US. Is their Arabic-language reporting different? I don't regularly follow them, but their English-language reporting seems to be professional and not greatly slanted whenever I've run across it. It's actually _less_ obviously partisan, from what I can tell, than a lot of typical Western news sources (think MSNBC v. Fox News), even well-respected ones (think _Libération_ versus _Le Figaro_ ), possibly due to their attempt to appeal to a fairly broad pan-Arab-world audience.

<comment><USER4> Very interesting question. I'll try to answer. I feel this way myself although I haven't taken much time to consume their material or examine why I have my opinions.

I believe it was because that I figured that any network owned by a bunch of dictators from the Middle East wouldn't have my best interests, or the interests of the average citizen, in mind. Seems like I also remember OBL releasing tapes to AJ -- they always seemed to have a magic touch of finding these terrorism videos nobody else could get. From the rumors I heard, they ran so much pro-terror and anti-Israel commentary and opinion shows (in my mind) I began to think they were part of the problem and not part of the solution. I also remember quotes from some of their shows with the most ridiculous Islamist propaganda. Seems like there were some spying allegations involving their reporters too. And IIRC, didn't they have reporters/producers that were so close to insurgents that it was difficult for the U.S. Military to separate where journalism ended and where terrorism began?

But thanks for asking that. I need to reexamine my feelings and make sure they are valid. Most of the items I bring up above I heard third-hand or from rumors. Perhaps they run a fine news organization and just have editorial content I might find objectionable. No reason to throw the baby out with the bath water.

<comment><USER5> While you're re-examining, throw in Russia Today (<http://rt.com/>). Not quite the same calibre, but interesting to watch your thoughts while watching it.

<comment><USER6> Clips from Russia Today seem to end up on Reason.TV's podcast feed a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The live coverage is pretty good.

I've quit watching TV for ages. But oddly, i'm hooked on their coverage for the past 48 hrs, via the live webcast.

It reminds me of the good old BBC (before i found out they practiced censorship)

<comment><USER8> And not without a reason, they have a sizeable amount of ex BBC people in their staff.

<comment><USER9> Heck, they have Sir David Frost himself!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Aside from the political and journalistic implications, I think it's interesting that they're making this available under a Creative Commons license. Are there any other major news organizations that CC license any of their content? I'd be shocked if _any_ of the major US news organizations use the CC licenses in any meaningful way.

<comment><USER11> Democracy Now! does:

<http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/10849>

But they fail the "major" qualification.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Has there been any talk about how Al Jazeera is getting their footage out of Egypt? I'm assuming they're probably using their own communication satellites, has the Egyptian government made any public comments about what they think of Al Jazeera reporting on this?

<comment><USER13> _> has the Egyptian government made any public comments about what they think of Al Jazeera reporting on this?_

At some time around 3PM UK time yesterday (bang in the middle of the rioting), they suddenly broke off the commentary from their studio in downtown cairo, saying "The police have entered the building." There was a knock at the door, some shouting in arabic, a moment of silence then they carried on with the news, perhaps sounding slightly shaken.

Take from that what you will.

EDIT: Also at one point they had a split screen with their live footage of a burning upturned APC on one side, and the feed from egyptian state TV showing a calm and placid view of the skyline on the other. They then spent the next few minutes roundly mocking the regime for living in a dream world. It was pretty funny.

<comment><USER14> At that moment the police just wanted them not to stand on the balcony - <USER2> the curfew was about to start.

So they stayed with the camera inside for like 15 minutes and then moved out on the balcony again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "reversing the North to South flow of information"

</comment><comment><USER16> for some more perspective on this, yesterdays thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2152622>

</comment><comment><USER17> A question from an American..

I am attempting to understand the political landscape in Egypt. Two questions:

1\. would it be correct to say that there are in fact two MB orgs, one that is non violent and slightly good and one MB org that is violent and not good?

2\. Given the almost outright banning of opposition political parties in Egypt what political parties is the military involved with?

<comment><USER3> As far as I know, all current prominent leaders in the Egyptian MB support nonviolence, which the group officially adopted in the 1970s--- that led to the more radical factions leaving to form groups like Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Group.

There's a range of politics within that, though, from religious-conservative types who'd like a more traditionalist Islamic republic, to almost-secular moderates who focus on the movement's social institutions and see Islam's role as mainly spiritual/charitable. Since it's been operating semi-underground, I'm not sure anyone is 100% sure which leaders would end up dominating if it were to operate in the open and have some degree of power. The _hope_ among western analysts is that its strength over the past ~20 years in universities and social services means that it's picked up enough educated moderates so that they would dominate a legalized version of the organization.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why are you not using semver? - <AUTHOR> While many OSS have adopted semver (http://semver.org/) it is not hard to find one that it doesn't. I'm sure the maintainers must have its reasons (I hope it's not laziness), and would like to know them. <comment><USER2> I don't exactly know but on what project do you base yourself on? I can see many projects not versioning at all (or just tagging incrementally when they find it's stable enough). So my guess is that semver wouldn't be followed because they do not keep track of the features and breaking changes that might happen.

<comment><AUTHOR> git uses semver i think</comment></comment>


Bourne Basic – a BASIC interpreter implemented in pure Bourne shell (1987) - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/cander/2785819 <comment><USER2> When I read "pure Bourne shell" I expected just /bin/sh.

This uses cat, sed, rm, cp, grep, bc, sort, etc. too.

The shell part may be "pure Bourne shell" but there are other utilities involved besides sh.

I guess it was not the convention in 1987 and probably not today either but if it were me I would mention those other utilities.

As a challenge, I always try to minimize the number of extra utilities I have to use, and then I try to stick with the most common, basic ones.

As a result I get highly portable scripts that run just about anywhere, even in reduced functionality, embedded environments, especially non-Busybox ones.

In my experience, cp and rm are to be expected in any userland.

cat and sed are another two of the most common, basic utilities.

But things like grep -v... I would only use that if there were no other way to do the task; e.g., can we accomplish task with sed /pattern/d\;...?

If you're willing to include AWK you can do just about anything; personally I do not rely on AWK being present everywhere.

<comment><USER3> I like thinking about this problem space. However, I do rely on awk. Awk has been around since V7, I've not yet found a system without it.

A gap I've spent some time thinking about in constrained unix - how to do socket IPC. For example - building a cgi server. So far I've struggled without either a modern scripting language (perl, python, etc) or else a C compiler. And locked-down or decrepit systems will often lack a working C compiler.

I'd expect someone who knew what they were doing could build an awk tool that would parse a DSL to produce binaries that makes unix system calls. Probably awkward, you'd need to do your own elf packaging. A problem I might one day get around to.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for commenting.

I experimented with small C compilers but UNIX is too intertwined with too many "standard" C libraries. I would like to see a UNIX that used some other libraries, if for nothing else as a proof of concept; e.g., maybe use some of djb's libraries. musl is a good start.

Eventually I decided to just include "as" in the userlands in my small systems instead. I have a library of small asm routines that I keep available, similar to C's "standard" libraries but not taking up the enormous space they do.

But I think the easy way to do socket IPC is just include socat or some other alternative like tcpserver or a small httpd.

Statically compiling socat is made easy and I really admire how the author makes it possible to add/subtract features when compiling. It's the antithesis of forcing the user to accept the kitchen sink, which alas is the norm. Smart.

If the systems you are targeting have a RAM based filesystem that you can mount and transfer files to, and enough RAM to spare, you should be able to run a static binary from RAM that can listen on a socket and run scripts/programs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's charming to remember that there was an era when you could document half your commands with "works as expected."</comment>


What Is Fedora Silverblue? - <AUTHOR> https://fedoramagazine.org/what-is-silverblue/ <comment><USER2> It is the reason I'm slowly moving away from Linux. I've learned Linux, for years I've invested time and money learning everything I could. And it was fun. I even built LFS many times. I know how NOT to break it and how to fix it. And as we have seen with GNOME3, systemd, Wayland etc. RH will deliver and every major distribution will eventually adopt immutable directories and statically linked applications. So, my conclusion after all this years learning and having fun with Linux is that it was a waste of time. I understand the propaganda: it's good for everyone (who don't like dealing with Linux, the OS). And I understand the real reason: distribution developers don't like the tedious work that is compiling, linking and packaging the same software over and over again. But the feeling that I wasted my time. If it's to use a immutable, bloated, reboot-all-the-time OS, I just use any other OS</comment>


How do you handle problem of too many choices? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
I am struggling when there are too many choices in my life - even when I am trying to select movie to watch on Netflix I'm spending like 30 minutes trying to choose something good and often with no results.
Sometimes filtering the results help me a lot for example when I am trying to buy new shoes via Intenet I'm filtering results by me shoe size which is quite small for a men and color black and then with smaller amount of results it is much easier to me.
The examples I provided are very simple but I am struggling even with my everyday life and career path choices.
How do you cope with it? <comment><USER2> I'm a totally undecided person. My first solution is to accept it - As in spend lots of time on the choice if it matters. If I need to buy something expensive, it will sometimes take me weeks / months background thinking about it, and I'm ok with that. If it's not urgent, why worry about that?

The second is to get many answers at the same time. I've usually got a list of movies to watch / things to read that I make in one go. You can bookmark things in some category with the idea that the next time you'll just grab the top one when you need it. You spent the time choosing them, so that part is done.

The third one is just to accept I won't make perfect choices. I can't say it's going to be easy for you, but this requires some level of training the "I don't care this isn't great. The other options would have their own issues." approach. Unless you have perfect knowledge about the products, it's always going to be true. If it was a really crappy choice, you learned something for the next time... but it doesn't matter. You saved time/energy by making one.

</comment><comment><USER3> Any time someone mentions a new book that sounds interesting, I put it on a list. Then next time when I want something to read, I pick it from the list based on what still sounds interesting & overall score others have given it.

For Netflix, well maybe it isn't too crazy to spend a bit of time to choose, especially if it's a TV series as you might end up spending hours on it? I find analysis paralysis and setting my bar too high also a useful method to just avoid wasting time watching anything at all.</comment>


Ask HN: How did you buy your company domain? How much did it cost? - <AUTHOR> Did you choose a name for your company based on .com availability? Did you shell out a five-figure sum to a particularly stubborn domain speculator and got a great single-word name you really liked? Did you negotiate a 90% discount? Did you hire a professional namer? Settled for a get∗.com, ∗app.com or a new gTLD and are happy with it, despite PG's advice? Had to rebrand after having chosen a shitty name? <comment><USER2> Did you choose a name for your company based on .com availability?

\- Yes. Went with a .io

Did you shell out a five-figure sum to a particularly stubborn domain speculator and got a great single-word name you really liked?

\- No. Purchased retail for $80/yr.

\- Shameless plug: earthdata.io

Did you negotiate a 90% discount?

\- No.

Did you hire a professional namer?

\- No.

Settle for a get∗.com, ∗app.com or a new gTLD and are happy with it, despite PG's advice?

\- No. .io is appropriate for an IoT business, we're happy with it.

Had to rebrand after choosing a shitty name?

\- No. We like our name, before and after branding.

But I get your point. Domain squatters and speculators are a PITA, but no surprise that they exist in our capitalist-leaning world.</comment>


Intel outs 64-bit KitKat Android, 'Braswell' chip for Chromebooks - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnet.com/news/intel-outs-baswell-next-chip-for-chromebooks/ <comment><USER2> Hmm, I figured we'd see 4GB+ RAM on Android ARM before a commercial Android x86_64 release ... guess there's still time.</comment>


Harvard University Prof. claims coconut oil is not healthy - <AUTHOR> https://globalnews.ca/news/4399197/coconut-oil-pure-poison/ <comment><AUTHOR> Augh, I did not realize that someone else already posted on this topic [1]. Probably best to comment there and ignore this post.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17811338](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17811338)

<comment><USER2> Neither article seems to link to substantive support of the conclusion. Last I looked the American Heart Association was against low-carb diets in general, while organizations like the American Diabetes Association seemed more open to them.

<comment><AUTHOR> The science of the effect of nutrition on human health seems to be a very difficult problem. Society appears to be continuously spammed with contradictions resulting in confusion and distrust. Although I know it is an impossibility, I often wonder, in an idealistic society with all other things being equal, but with the removal of greed and corruption, if scientists simply researched for the sake of finding the truth, would we understand by now the effects of nutrition on human health?

I know that can't be answered, but I wonder just what 8 billion human minds are actually capable of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I cook with coconut oil all of the time because it has a high heat capacity. My wife also bakes with it frequently. I am curious what other's know about the health affects of coconut oil. I am no health expert.</comment>


Facebook Fired Employee Who Collected Evidence of Potential Political Bias - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/craigsilverman/facebook-zuckerberg-what-if-trump-disputes-election-results <comment><USER3> As a Facebook Employee who watched this thing unfold:

His arguments and reasoning were edited for tone and posted by others and HR did not take any of that down. He wasn't fired for what he said, but how he said it. His post was vicious and demeaning toward other FB employees. It directly attacked the character and ethical constitution of specific employees in the company.

That said, HR did later revoke open access to some of the specific details he used to make his case (conversations around investigating and escalating user reports). FB gives employees access to much more than most companies, so the sort of things HR made secret would not be visible at most US companies.

Although I think at FB there are many things you can't say, his actual beliefs were not bold or rare. Many people say similar things all the time. But you can't go around attacking people like that.

<comment><USER4> Don't know that specific story but the culture at FB is pretty open and people ask hard questions all the time on workplace and at Q&As. So it's sad to see some people abusing this knowing that not that many companies are open to such internal dialogues. Tragedy of the common.

<comment><USER5> what about the engineer who jumped to his death after a bad review?

<comment><USER4> Do you have a specific question? It's tragic obviously and impacted many of us.

<comment><USER6> (different commenter here)

Of the handful of people I know who work at FB, all of them are super smart and motivated. Half of them have expressed a lot of anxiety, stress, and imposter syndrome to me over their reviews. I've seen this at other companies when a project is failing but I hear about it at FB from A players who are working on successful projects. It gives me the impression the managers must be brutal - like they just push harder than other companies and make people feel they aren't good enough to get more output. These are my impressions as an outsider. Does it seem fair to you?

<comment><USER7> I think not manager but peers. They are mostly over achievers and somewhat competitive.

<comment><USER8> Is that because leadership rewards such behavior? I wonder if pressure would be the same If working 12hr days is discouraged and emphasis placed on collaboration and team delivery.

Leadership sets the tone and culture so it's always leadership's fault if culture is toxic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Potential" Political bias.

Can we just acknowledge for a moment what it'd be like to have a colleague who's desperately trying to prove that your work is a "big conspiracy" when you're honestly all just trying to do your best.

I see so many of these stories of weirdly rogue political activist type employees recently surprised when they their employer doesn't like that they're purposely trying to undermine them and their employees work. I'm sure Facebook isn't perfect, but I know enough good people who work there to know they're not all out to "get" us.

This smells like sour grapes* from an employee who focused more on their plans to take down their employer than their actual job.

*ed: previously written as "sour apples"...it's been a long day.

<comment><USER10> Sorry, but "good people" who are involved with all the evil things Facebook does by working for them aren't good people. I know it's hip to absolve yourself of responsibility by saying "I just work here" or "I didn't work on that", but all these rationalizations don't fly as long as you're one of the quiet majority that does nothing to fight what Facebook does.

Seriously, techies seem to act on the same amoral plane as business executives and I wonder how you people manage to sleep at night.

<comment><USER11> There's 2 things here to keep in mind to go down your train of logic:

1) The company is actually doing evil things

2) The employee is aware of the purported evil things the company is doing, and agrees with that claim

Now we can debate all we want how evil Facebook is or not, but how many employees do you think check off box 2?

<comment><USER12> I find it difficult to believe that the average Facebook employee is exposed to less media coverage about their own company than a member of the general public is. So the remaining possibilities are that the employee either agrees with the policy (in which case, we can question their judgment), or they're just trying to keep food on the table (in which case, we should wonder about how healthy the job market is).

<comment><USER13> There are more options than you've presented. There is also that the employee has perfectly valid and logical reasons for believing the policy isn't evil. In other words, the issue is you see the policies as evil with no possibility to see otherwise.

I use facebook to connect with my family and friends. I've unfollowed all overly political friends. I get no real or fake news in my facebook feed. If I worked at facebook I'd be proud of helping people to stay connected.

<comment><USER12> There's no question that there are good things about Facebook, but I think a fully contemplative person would need to balance those things against the harms Facebook allows to exist on their platform. It's not a black and white question of good vs evil, as much as it is "does what this company does (or not do), on balance, comport with my values of right or wrong?" Evidence of wrong-doing and questionable judgment by the company's leaders is abundant. And at some point you can't continue to work for a company without being complicit in its sins; after all, a company hires someone because they need them to help execute the company's decisions.

<comment><USER14> What if you replaced "Facebook" with "the US federal government"?

Can you continue to work for the digital service without being complicit in the government's sins? There is plenty of evidence of wrong-doing and questionable judgement by the government's leaders, for sure.

Say everyone who did take issue with Facebook's policies decided to leave – who would be left?

<comment><USER12> The Government is subject to a Constitution that has an amendment process, and laws are made by elected leadership who can be voted out by the people.

Facebook is not a democracy, and given the corporate structure and differing voting rights of shareholders, it is practically impossible to replace the current leadership even if a majority of shareholders wanted to.

Moreover, the Government is immense and highly diverse in its missions compared to Facebook. I don't think anyone reasonably believes the sins of the CIA should be borne by, say, U.S. Forest Service park rangers. If Facebook had a public service mission that, among other things, provided essential services to the public like food and housing, perhaps the discussion would be different.

> Say everyone who did take issue with Facebook's policies decided to leave – > who would be left?

Some might say that this is the desired outcome, but eventually management might see the writing on the wall and change the way they do business. Indeed, this is one of the key mechanisms of unionized labor - to bring management to the table for negotiation through the threat of work stoppage (striking).

<comment><USER14> I think the government is indeed massive with a diverse set of goals, but I think employees at Facebook may see their workplace the same way:

\- They could work on something "good", like trust and safety, community moderation tools, emergency response, etc.

\- They could work on something user-driven or "neutral", like Events or Groups which are used to organize anything from BLM protests to Trump rallies.

If they're not actively designing privacy anti-patterns or trying to make the news feed more addictive, quitting would not really affect those problem areas.

I think organizing at the workplace is a great idea, and the threat of work stoppage could be a very real one if enough employees organize. But the idea of telling people to quit their jobs and distance themselves from the problem is very different from telling them to start organizing to fix the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a rough situation. The guy was pulling on an important thread to unravel a complex issue and get us all transparency. And then he wrote a company wide memo that called Mark a "robber baron, slaver, and plunderer", directly blamed Mark for covid deaths due to his implied support of Trump, and levied a bunch of other personal attacks.

I can't imagine any person at any company who wouldn't get fired after publicly speaking to the CEO that way.

It's a shame, because if this guy had an emotional intelligence he could have personally driven change. Now he's a martyr at best.

<comment><USER16> It's weird coming into this thread after just finishing Schindler's List. It's like the polar opposite of how to effectively operate in an evil system.

For anyone who believes they're participating in an evil system: quit, whistleblow, or sabotage. Don't be like this guy.

<comment><USER17> He literally did all 3? He whistleblew, sabatoged by doing this in a way that it got to the media and by insulting Zuck, and he got himself fired.

<comment><USER16> Whistleblowing would be working with the media or regulators to get out as much information as possible. Sabotaging is staying at the company and thwarting their efforts. What he did (calling attention internally to messages that were already available for employees to see) barely counts as either of those. Sure, you could say he effectively quit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I can't believe there's an actually a debate at all about what's going on here.

There are multiple sources indicating that conservative sites work in concert to amplify, at best, specious content and at worst, complete misinformation.

Facebook selectively enforces discipline on these sites because:

1\. Conservative information (Fox News, Charlie Kirk, Breitbart, etc.) is consistently shared more than other content

2\. They don't want the optics of making it seem like they're censoring conservative voices because they're afraid of the blowback, so they're hiding behind the veil of "It's not our job"

3\. They don't want to lose the ad spend running up to the election season nor do they want to lose the vanity metrics of DAU/MAU/etc because they're a publicly traded company

Zuck is a feckless coward, full stop. And while I don't know his personal political leanings, this non-policy certainly has the earmarks of Thiel and Joel Kaplan all over it.

<comment><USER19> 1) Why is this? Is it because both sides share it vs just typical echo chamber sharing? I know it's not "shared more because more people believe it" as the US is pretty close to 50/50.

<comment><USER20> I don't have data to answer how much of what causes this, but certainly there seem to be some very savvy ad strategy decisions on the Republican side such as this: [https://twitter.com/kevinroose/status/1290739595278028800](https://twitter.com/kevinroose/status/1290739595278028800)

TLDR is that if you know certain subjects will get your base talking about something else that you aren't allowed to promote (such as a conspiracy theory), you promote the hell out of real news stories about those subjects knowing your base will a) share and b) discuss the conspiracy theories in the comments.

It's a very clever way to use money to boost the conversation around untrue claims, while technically neither the ad buyer nor seller are responsible since it's the users doing the lying. And I don't know what the solution is, fact checking every user comment isn't feasible..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Taking this together with the recent house hearings and with other material, like AOC's questioning of Zuckerberg, it seems like leftist people (a) are distrustful of the tech giants' business and wealth and don't really believe it's been beneficial; and yet (b) trust them to regulate speech and want them to do so more aggressively. It's not logical.

<comment><USER22> Seems like your (b) is mistaken, they _want_ them to regulate speech (the "aggressively part let's leave aside) and do so within clear parameters. It seems fairly clear that they are not trusted to regulate the speech but rather expected to and are to be closely monitored for how they do so.. the hearings themselves are evidence of that.

<comment><USER23> But if you don't trust them, then how do hearings help? Hearings only ask questions and but don't create any change?

<comment><USER24> Often politics aren't about the person being spoken with but the people watching the conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "Facebook employees want CEO Mark Zuckerberg to explain what the company would do if the leader of the free world uses the social network to undermine the results of the 2020 US presidential election"

this is so silly, and later when the article claims "misinformation", it's a tricky situation to claim you know the 100% truth about everything and anything that goes against what you believe is considered misinformation that will undermine an election... totally ignoring the possibility that you might actually not be correct and that things aren't as black and white as you think they are

<comment><USER26> > this is so silly

Why is it "silly" exactly? Are you saying that Facebook wouldn't allow itself to be used this way, that the government wouldn't try, or that it's not possible? Are you contending that the results of an election are not "black and white"?

<comment><USER27> Clearly the results of an election are not always black-and-white, otherwise there wouldn't be contested elections.

"Undermine" is obviously a subjective judgement, not an objective one. Which in turn makes it difficult to legislate "prevent people from using social networks to undermine elections" in an objective way.

And this is now my personal opinion, but legislation that cannot be enforced with some amount of objectivity is a recipe for disaster down the road.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> As an example of bias, I've recently seen on Facebook a post that instructed the readers to shoot law enforcement people in the face. Not exaggerating, those are the exact words, "shoot him in the face". Facebook told me this is well within the "community standards". Yet for example Zuckerberg personally promised to ban any page that promotes protests against COVID lockdown. So, calling for protesting lockdown - ban, calling for murdering the police - OK. Sounds like a bias.

</comment><comment><USER29> Of course this happens because if Facebook actually nukes pages like Breitbart, right-wingers will claim this is evidence of Facebook's leftist bias. I see this claim on my feed all the time already.

There is nothing Facebook can do that won't cause a riot. But if there's truly no acceptable action for Facebook and similar platforms, maybe the only option in the long-run is for them to cease to exist.

<comment><USER30> Not really true. Content policy can take a lot of different forms. There's a purely compliant approach — only respecting the legal requirements, like illegal content — and then there's an approach of being Big Brother, taking a censorship role. Facebook seems to want to be at least a little bit of a censor.

<comment><USER22> I believe there are no examples of platforms with any significant reach that can possibly take a purely compliance approach. Speech permissible by law in many jurisdictions is well beyond what is tolerable in public forums - <USER2> tolerable in your office meeting room.

<comment><USER31> There is no such thing as "tolerable" \- there is only what one can tolerate. To phrase it that way asks the question who claims they're incapable of tolerating what.

"Intolerable speech" makes it sound like it's the speech's fault.

<comment><USER32> "Fire in a crowded theater" is intolerable speech, and so is publicly calling for executions. It's enshrined in jurisprudence.

US only, other nations probably have larger lists of free speech exclusions: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions#As_educator)

<comment><USER33> >"Fire in a crowded theater" is intolerable speech, and so is publicly calling for executions. It's enshrined in jurisprudence.

Directly threathening to execute someone maybe. But "Fire in a crowded theater" has not been part of jurisprudence for... 40 years. The US has very, very limited free speech restrictions.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its- tim...](https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-time-to-stop- using-the-fire-in-a-crowded-theater-quote/264449/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> "Facebook did not answer questions about why a partner manager would cite ad volume as a reason for not acting against a group of pages."

Oops somebody said the thing out loud.

</comment><comment><USER35> This type of thing happens to people on the right so often it doesn't even make the news anymore.

<comment><USER36> The other post asking for examples is downvoted, but I think your statement could really use some. I can only think of one highly visible one, and it's interesting how much it reminds me of this one, though on the opposite side. But more examples would be illuminating.

<comment><USER36> I can't reply to the flagged reply anymore, but I see now that I was thinking of this thread as "within the tech industry", while they were thinking of it more broadly. Looking up-thread, I see that that my more narrow interpretation isn't necessarily the right one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> With regards to right wing pages who contact Facebook to get their flags resolved, the article seems to suggest it's inappropriate that they reached out directly -- but the business relationship is between Facebook and the user with a profile, not the user with a profile and a 3rd party.

 _These and other interventions appear to be in violation of Facebook's official policy, which requires publishers wishing to dispute a fact check rating to contact the Facebook fact-checking partner responsible._

 _[...]_

 _Instead of appealing to the fact-checker they immediately call their rep at Facebook..._

This is a little like when my package gets lost, and -- very rarely -- the shipper tells me to contact the post office instead of simply claiming the insurance and refunding me. These shippers often _don 't_ give me the receipt I need to show the post office that it was insured -- because telling me to contact the post office is just another way to say, not my problem. The post office is likely to say: please contact the shipper...

If the user isn't happy with what Facebook did -- regardless of whose advice Facebook took -- they have every right to contact Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER37> Good, companies shouldn't employ people who deliberately smear and sabotage them.

</comment><comment><USER38> US politics is so fucked

\- Fake news is bad

\- Government taking out fake news is actually bad??

\- But facebook taking out fake news based on its own judgement with absolutely no due process is obviously okay???

Now it becomes a shouting match to get Facebook to ban posts/people they don't like.

Who can harass Facebook employees the most will probably win the shouting match.

<comment><USER39> The very first amendment of the U.S.'s constitution outlies that the government cannot censor the expression of speech.

There's a big difference between a private company determining what is hosted on their servers vs. the U.S. government forcing a private company to censor speech.

<comment><USER40> What happens when that applies to ISPs determining what goes over their wires? We have a privately owned public square at this point. Further entrenching that power seems unwise.

<comment><USER41> So in your hypothetical world there is some conspiracy between the thousands of ISPs which will work together to decide what content peoples see.

Even though consumers will simply move to another ISP just like they are free to move to another website.

<comment><USER40> Thousands? There are only a handful of ISPs at the top and, oh yeah, the last time they _made a plan to collude_ , it birthed Net Neutrality.

So I'm not sure what part of it happening before makes it seem unlikely to happen again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The actual title of this article is "Facebook Fired An Employee Who Collected Evidence Of Right-Wing Pages Getting Preferential Treatment"

<comment><USER43> The submitter rewrote it because it didn't fit the 80-char limit. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24077718](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24077718)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> A day ago, "Facebook removed from Trump's official account the post of a video clip from a Fox News interview in which he said children are "almost immune" from covid-19." (source WP)

Is this really misinformation, or a false statement, worthy of censoring a presidents speech. For one, "almost immune", is not the same as claiming "immune". So its not even like its even a false statement, anymore than saying I "almost caught" a fish, when you didn't.

The implication is that children have low infection rate.

Regardless of the truth value, of "almost immune", removing the post, also robs people of valuable information, like for example, if Trump is leaning to have schools open in September.

<comment><USER45> My question is why censor the US President? Let people know what Trump says and make their own judgement. I hate this sort of political censorship by social media giants. At the same time, you can literally find porn and gore on these sites which aren't taken down automatically. What with advancements in AI and all it should be easy to remove right? Nope. These are the videos that linger on even after you report them. And they have ads running on them too.

If they think people are fools and won't notice it they are so wrong. It is only going to amplify voices for an alternative platform. My fear is that it will create platforms divided on political biases rather than a truly free platform where people from all sides can participate. This sort of polarization is not healthy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Eye-opening how many HN comments are framing this guy as a demented political extremist. He's a whistleblower exposing one of the most frightening threats to modern democracy that exists.

We are beyond the speculation point here. Facebook has demonstrated that it has the capability to spread misinformation and sway political opinion very effectively and never for the right reasons. The pandemic is the most recent example of Facebook's fuckery: post something that tells people that Covid is caused by 5G and that Bill Gates wants to implants microchips in you? You might get a small disclaimer on your FB post saying that "parts of it" "may be" inaccurate. You are constantly fed anything to keep you engaged with the platform and increasing Facebook's bottom line.

Zuckerburg has just spun to Congress that Facebook is going to extreme lengths to moderate their platform - this employee's testimony is proof that Facebook doesn't care in the least or worse, they may be actively trying to help along candidates who will be politically lenient towards their behavior. We just discovered a "bug" caused Republican ads to show at a more frequent rate than Democratic ads - I don't know what's more worrying: that a bug on Facebook could swing the election or that it wasn't a bug at all.

People need to stop with the "I know good people at Facebook" B.S. It's beside the point. Facebook is a rogue actor that has enormous social and political power to completely mislead the general public into practically any belief. They have continued to demonstrate that they cannot be trusted with this power. This man should be praised as a whistleblower for exposing the charade that is an unregulated Facebook. We need more like him in tech to show people how serious the problem is. Give me a break with the analyses on whether he should have been fired or not and recognize the scope of the problem he is trying to warn is about. The quality of our democracy is absolutely at stake.

<comment><USER47> People are free to not use FB. Let's assign some agency to the users too.

<comment><USER48> Do you mean to imply that advertising and propaganda _don 't work?_

That doesn't seem like an argument anyone would _want to make_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> For this employee's sake, I hope they have adequate legal representation, and that they intend to sue.

> While there are signs Facebook will stand up to Trump in cases where he > violates its rules — as on Wednesday when it removed a video post from the > president in which he claimed that children are "almost immune" to COVID-19 > — there are others who suggest the company is caving to critical voices on > the right. In another recent Workplace post, a senior engineer collected > internal evidence that showed Facebook was giving preferential treatment to > prominent conservative accounts to help them remove fact-checks from their > content.

> The company responded by removing his post and restricting internal access > to the information he cited. On Wednesday the engineer was fired, according > to internal posts seen by BuzzFeed News.

</comment><comment><USER50> Counter point: [https://www.projectveritas.com/news/another-facebook- whistle...](https://www.projectveritas.com/news/another-facebook- whistleblower-interference-on-a-global-level-in-elections/)

Depending on which media outlet you turn to Facebook is trying to skew the election towards Trump or Biden. Depending on your political bias you get the story that fits your narrative. Perhaps our framing is off?

</comment><comment><USER39> Sounds like the James Damore event for Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER51> Listed companies should have comprehensive Whistle blower protection programs; Govt should amend laws accordingly;

</comment><comment><USER5> is it just me or would it be very hard to work at Facebook these days without constantly experiencing cognitive dissonance day in and day out?

feels like the only way to enjoy working there is to either be someone who only cares about the money and prestige and/or convince yourself that the criticisms against Facebook are invalid

<comment><USER4> I can assure you that what you're imagining Facebook to be has nothing to do with how Facebook is on the inside. There are way more of these debates and internal discussions, which reflects that Facebook's employees have pretty diverse point of views.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Unrelated but anybody found the timing uncanny between the Instagram TikTok competition being launched the same week that Trump starts talking about banning it? That and all the heat Facebook/Zuckerberg have been taking to enable political ads (compared to Twitter/Dorsey), plus private dinners with the current administration that is very protectionist? Anyways, it's interesting to see how the US government will handle all this foreign established tech companies to handle their data by messing with the free market.</comment>


Facebook hiring monetization principle - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/careers/department?dept=data&req=a2KA0000000LtgxMAC

<comment><USER2> You mean principal. Pretty sure they try to avoid principles.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Its funny they do this after the IPO.</comment>


Show HN: The new Google search results look terrible, so I fixed them - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/serp-fixer/fnepmelfanaahajfmfimdhlkfjalcejc <comment><USER2> Consider using [https://duckduckgo.com](https://duckduckgo.com). You'll find comparable, occasionally superior, search results provided by a company that has more respect for you as a human.

</comment><comment><USER3> By switching to DuckDuckGo?</comment>


Is Bernie Sanders More Electable Than Hillary Clinton? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/01/12/why-the-gop-is-more-likely-than-clinton-to-target-sanders/ <comment><USER2> There's a huge difference between the conventional wisdom and the early polls on this. The fact that Bernie polls better than Clinton against possible Republican candidates despite having less name recognition suggests that it may not be about Bernie at all, but more about Clinton's negatives.

</comment><comment><USER3> Our beloved SW engineer Andrew Tanenbaum, (you know, MINIX and many books) who runs the website electoral-vote.com does not think so. He mistrusts those numbers, and is totally sure that nobody has a chance against Hillary Rodham this time. Esp. the big endorsements she concentrated early on.

At [http://www.electoral- vote.com/evp2015/Pres/Maps/Dec27.html#i...](http://www.electoral- vote.com/evp2015/Pres/Maps/Dec27.html#item-1) he wonders why the top endorsements are still missing, besides the fact that Hillary cannot loose.

[http://www.electoral- vote.com/evp2015/Pres/Maps/Oct27.html#i...](http://www.electoral- vote.com/evp2015/Pres/Maps/Oct27.html#item-3) features the best arguments, taken from BloombergPolitics.

Personally I would endorse Bernie of course. The list of criminals and liers for POTUS is too long already. But what did we think of Obama before and what did happen?</comment>


Ways to Bring Tech Jobs to Rural Areas - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/30/opinion/tech-rural-america.html <comment><USER4> There was a big push to wire up rural areas in the early 2000s. It didn't happen everywhere, but it happened in quite a few places that can serve as data points. Here in Maryland there is quite a bit of municipal fiber covering the areas Verizon FiOS doesn't. Some of it has been in place since the early 2000s. Are those communities with fiber doing better than those without it, economically? They're not doing any better than their neighbors without fiber. The limiting factor isn't the availability of bandwidth, it's the lack of desire to hire anyone from these places for remote work. This is not a "build it and they will come" situation. Many places built it. Nobody came.

People have these unfounded romantic notions about fiber and economic development. Here in Maryland, more than 60% of households have access to fiber. Has it revolutionized the economy? Not at all. Annapolis is a small city (pop. 40,000) that has had fiber more than a decade and almost all the tech jobs here are connected to the Navy (and we're already here). What do people do with fiber here? Netflix. Fiber is not a catalyst for job creation and economic growth. It's a means for content consumption. That makes it an awful investment of public dollars.

<comment><USER5> Could it be that you need to first invest in fiber, then you need to invest in other things like small business incentives and attracting VC?

<comment><USER6> The crux of the problem is that people only talk about jobs, and other people/corporations creating those jobs. Everyone can agree we need more jobs and better jobs. The real issue is that people aren't finding ways to start their own business, make themselves a job. Politicians use the word "jobs" like saying it makes them appear. And too many people think that is how is should work. Those people miss out. Make a good business for yourself and people will throw money at you.

<comment><USER7> You act like it's just that simple

1\. Have an idea for a profitabld business

2\. Raise enough money until the business becomes profitable and self sustaining

People in the tech industry are so use to being able to get money from VCs once they get to step 1 and aren't concerned with step 2 because they are just trying to survive long enough to have an "exit strategy".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _... They are proud of their small-town values ...._

And this part of the issue. I come from a small town. The "values" of small towns are racist, homophopic, and nationalistic. I've known many people who moved away, started dating someone of another race and then come back home with their significant other and feel completely out of place - not because of family, but because of the city. I've also had gay relatives who refuse to visit family back home but welcome them to come to where they live in a larger city.

I'm Black and in conversations, when I tell people where I live - an infamous "sundown town" as recently as the 80s - the first thing I hear is "why do you want to live around all of those White folks". People don't understand how much of an anachronism small town America is. The brain drain is real, young people who are capable can't wait to move as soon as possible to experience more of the world.

I can't imagine anyone who is not a native born American ever wanting to live there.

<comment><USER8> Not "all" small towns are racist. Saying so is just ignorant.

I also think of all the values small towns have these aren't the forefront.

<comment><USER7> So which small rural town do you know of that is welcoming to non native Americans, minorities, or non straight people?

<comment><USER9> I think it's more a question of the number of newcomers, and their desire to integrate into the community versus their desire to change it to be like their place of origin. Some small towns seem very happy to accept hard working immigrants who they perceive to have compatible moral values.

For non-straight, I'm occasionally surprised by how well integrated (and even beloved) some non-straight inhabitants have been in the small towns I've lived in (Wisconsin and now Vermont). The problem might be that a town which is 90% welcoming may have the effect of being extremely non-welcoming depending on how much the 10% objects and behaves.

Earlier today I posted what I thought was an interesting small town Iowa immigration story: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-27/two- towns...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-27/two-towns-forged- an-unlikely-bond-now-ice-is-severing-the-connection). I was surprised by how welcoming at least some parts of the town were.

<comment><USER7> _I think it 's more a question of the number of new comers, and their desire to integrate into the community versus their desire to change it to be like their place of origin._

How will a non Christian "integrate" into rural America and "share their values", by converting to Christianity? How will either a gay couple or an interracial couple "integrate" where some Christians think their "lifestyle" is a sin?

[https://www.newsweek.com/20-percent-america-thinks- interraci...](https://www.newsweek.com/20-percent-america-thinks-interracial- marriage-morally-wrong-poll-finds-845608)

But if you are a _really_ lucky minority like I was and went to a predominately White Christian conservative school and knew the music, the hobbies, and "integrated" well enough you might get the reward of "not being like most Black people" or "being really articulate". But still, don't try to date our daughter.

As far as your article that says just the opposite of what you intended.

 _When you walk out here in the central park, if it's a warm day, they're sitting around on benches out here. I mean, it's like Europe. They don't stay in their apartments. They come out in the street, and they sit around and talk, and it's all in Spanish._

They aren't doing anything illegal. They are speaking to each other in their native language but it makes other people uncomfortable.

I don't speak a foreign language, but I'm pretty good at "code switching". I speak a lot differently when I'm at work where a lot of my coworkers are non native English speakers - I don't use a lot of colloquialism, I speak slower, and I don't reference a lot of pop references from 10 years ago. I also speak differently when I am back home - I am not as attentive about not letting my southern accent out.

When I am around my Black friends who are all professional software developers who live in the burbs, the last thing I am concerned about is "integrating" into my surroundings.

<comment><USER9> _As far as your article that says just the opposite of what you intended._

I read the article, and realize it's not entirely pro-immigrant. I meant what I said --- that I was surprised by how welcoming some of the town was. I was less surprised that there was also resistance. It's also worth noting that in the continuation of that quote, the speaker claims that he's not against immigrants in general, just against those who don't intend to integrate. I found that part to be positive: _"Don't get me wrong," says Heaton, who'll retire from the legislature in 2019. "The only thing that upsets me is if they're coming, they need to blend. I don't need 'barrios.' I don't need these certain sectors where everything is still the way it was where they came from. If you're going to meld, then meld."_

 _How will a non Christian "integrate" into rural America and "share their values", by converting to Christianity?_

It's tough. I think (I'm white but not Christian) that it can often be done by practicing shared values, independent of belief. If you are working on the same food drive or Habitat-for-Humanity house, a majority of Christians are willing to (at least temporarily) overlook the error of your religious beliefs (or lack thereof). If you simply don't share their values, well, that's where I think the real problems are.

I do wonder if being black in America might actually be worse for integration than being Hispanic or Asian. Even in small towns, I'm frequently surprised by how fully integrated and accepted by the community the second and subsequent generations are. In some ways, this seems more complete than in larger cities where there is a sizeable enough immigrant community to avoid integration. I haven't seen that as frequently for black Americans. Thoughts?

<comment><USER7> _The only thing that upsets me is if they're coming, they need to blend. I don't need 'barrios.' I don't need these certain sectors where everything is still the way it was where they came from. If you're going to meld, then meld."_

How are they "creating barrios"? By speaking their native toungue and maybe listening to Hispanic music? Would the city be happier if they all spoke English to each other and they listened to Taylor Swift and Tim McGraw?

 _I 'm frequently surprised by how fully integrated and accepted by the community the second and subsequent generations are. _

There are different levels of acceptance.

\- serving people in a place of business.

\- employment

\- socially

\- living in the same neighborhood

\- going to the same church

\- dating.

Statistically, most Black people live in a majority Black neighborhoods. Because of redlining, steering, economics, and just comfort.

Because we live in an overwhelmingly White area, if my (step)son is going to date anyone from school, more than likely they are going to be white. Parents haven't had any problems with it but is that because he has an acceptable pedigree and he grew up in the burbs, doesn't "talk Black", and we live in "good neighborhood"? How would they feel if he were the same person, doing well in school but lived on the other side of the tracks? Also, both my wife and I know how to "code switch".

 _If you are working on the same food drive or Habitat-for-Humanity house, a majority of Christians are willing to (at least temporarily) overlook the error of your religious beliefs (or lack thereof)._

It takes an effort to just bring Christian churches of multiple races to come together. When you are constantly being brainwashed into believing that Muslims are trying to spread Sharia law and that there are already some cities in the US under Sharia law, it's hard to shake those beliefs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was one part of a group of people who worked hard for several years to try to nurture a growing a tech scene in a rural area not far from Sacramento. I stepped away from that almost two years ago and my current thinking is it can't be done, not just because we largely failed at it but because there are a number of other towns trying to do the same and they aren't getting traction either.

I wonder if a healthy tech economy isn't more of an emergent behavior, and it tends to emerge in cities because there are more people, more resources, and more opportunities all mixing together.

You need good communications infrastructure, not just fiber but cellular too. If all you have available is satellite or (gulp) DSL, it's really painful to get work done. But that requires an enormous financial investment, especially in rural areas where RoI-per-mile is mostly negative.

Often the rural areas already have a culture there, and that culture doesn't necessarily want to get along with tech. Here, cellular providers can't deploy new towers because too many people are convinced that they'll get cancer, including some members of city council. Rural areas will tend to be mostly populated by people who either moved to get away from the city, or have never experienced life in a city. For those people, there's very little about a strong tech scene that sounds marketably attractive.

That also means that the talent just isn't there. And talent isn't there in part because opportunity isn't there. And opportunity isn't there because talent and infrastructure aren't there.

Nobody wants to just pump half a billion dollars or more into a small town just to see what shakes out, and if you did, you'd probably only end up ruining everything that made it an attractive enough small town to experiment with in the first place.

This is all really a shame, because it's contributing to a lot of the political and economic divide in this country, as rural areas are neglected, and shrink, and die slow deaths, while people all jostle for tiny amounts of space at high cost in dense population centers.

<comment><USER11> I grew up in a rural area near Sacramento. Culture is your big problem; when I was there, reading in public was "gay" and grounds for a (light) beating/physical humiliation.

Of course, I was in high school at the time, and high school is terrible everywhere; I'm sure it's different for adults. But, point being, at least in the '90s, it was not a place that encourages you to study or engage in intellectual pursuits.

<comment><USER10> Culture can be one of the challenges, and it is different once you get out of high school. This area (Nevada County) is far less hostile overall.

<comment><USER11> One of the reasons why I love the bay area so much is that not only is it not hostile, it's actively supportive. Like people talk about their favorite tech companies the way people talk about football teams in other parts of the country.

Moving from Yolo County to Santa Clara county, for me, was going from a place where being what I am made me an outcast, to a place where being what I am made me... valued to an irrational degree. Like I am not saying the bay area is better for everyone, I've talked to some people who find it really unfriendly here, but... for someone like me? it was really amazing to go from being treated irrationally badly to being treated.. irrationally well.

I think that and the fact that this is home for so many people who grew up with parents in the tech industry is really _the_ advantage the bay area has for tech industry work. I think everything else would follow, if you could move those things elsewhere. Getting good internet connectivity, even to a farm, really isn't that difficult or expensive, compared to the cost of a decent Engineer.

<comment><USER10> I grew up in the east bay, and my experience at school wasn't great, despite being lucky enough to go to one of the most technologically advanced school districts in the state at the time.

Anyway, everything else _doesn 't_ follow, because culture isn't a thing that can be just transported from one place to another. Nobody's got a reliable recipe for growing a specific culture. I think culture is instead a result of the environment.

Bend, Oregon has a great craft beer and outdoor culture that is the result of having Mount Hood and other features nearby, and being close enough to some metropolitan areas to get supplies but far enough away from them to retain its own identity.

Moab, Utah has a strong outdoors identity but little economy outside of that, because while they're one of the top destinations for mountain bikers, offroaders, hikers, and canyoneers, they're hours away from anything that anyone on HN would consider "a city".

Seattle's culture is largely the result of its location and history as a sea port and lumber area, and then a home to Boeing before Microsoft and the rest arrived. (And coffee for suffering through the winter.)

San Jose was a vast agricultural area when one side of my family settled in it a hundred years ago. Vast acres of easy-to-transform land, loose environmental regulations, nearby Stanford University, then Hewlett-Packard all transformed the culture there from agricultural to tech-driven.

So this is what I'm getting at: you don't set out to change the culture in an area. I don't think it works that way. I think the culture is an emergent effect of the conditions, and maybe you can change a few of the conditions a little bit, but mostly they work like natural processes. It's not economically feasible to just create a tech culture in a rural area, nor can you simply "change the culture" to make a rural area more tech-friendly.

There are a handful of people here who've had enough money to pay the $50k or more to get fiber lit up on their property. Doing that didn't make them more successful; they were already successful enough to be able to do it, and that success came from elsewhere.

<comment><USER11> >Anyway, everything else doesn't follow, because culture isn't a thing that can be just transported from one place to another. Nobody's got a reliable recipe for growing a specific culture. I think culture is instead a result of the environment.

my argument is that history and values _are_ culture. "everything else" is just physical infrastructure, which is comparatively easy to build, compared to getting people who value the things that need to be valued if you want a tech hub.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> well, germany is quite spread out and has lots of tech in smaller towns. It's not always perfect and we are also struggeling with some things, but I think a few approaches can be emulated. First, I think it's important that the small town is not on it's own, but in a close neighborhood of other smaller towns with which it's cooperating a lot. For a serious tech economy, even small towns need a working ecosystem (and I think can't be too small). They have to specialize, cooperate and develop the needed ecosystem, so that they can reach "critical mass" in some area. Ideally, this includes a small university nearby, so that there's a cooperation between the task of education and employement and the specialized, needed workforce can be trained. Also, research-institutes, which help small businesses which can't fund a research division on their own, are important. In germany, they are often coupled with thematic industrial clusters, a smaller patch of land where the city tries to get all the industry together. The research-institutes in germany are the Frauenhofer-institutes, public-private partnerships of applied reasearch with a focus and goal of supporting the local economy.

For example, the small town of Hof in bavaria with a population of 45.000. It has a university of applied science ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hof_University_of_Applied_Scie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hof_University_of_Applied_Sciences)), which is focused on educating the workforce suitable to the local economy (often in close cooperation). There's some research going on in the university, but it's not a research intensive one. Since the textile-industry in Hof is quite strong, there's a Frauenhofer cooperating with the university of applied science nearby ([https://www.htl.fraunhofer.de/en/manufacturing- processes/tex...](https://www.htl.fraunhofer.de/en/manufacturing- processes/textile-engineering.html)).

TLDR: I think tech in smaller towns is possible, but it needs a specialized economy, not too-small towns and a close cooperation between the public and private. Tech won't come by itself, it needs to be lured.

<comment><USER13> Germany has a good railway system that connects many (most? all?) small villages with nearby towns with nearby cities. More importantly, its rural population density is an order of magnitude greater than the US, at 237/km^2 vs 35/km^2 (source: [https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/rural-population- percen...](https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/rural-population-percent-of- total-population-wb-data.html), [https://tradingeconomics.com/united- states/rural-population-...](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/rural- population-percent-of-total-population-wb-data.html)). The biggest misconception that I've found my friends from other developed countries have about the US is that we are comparable to other developed countries; we aren't; we're more comparable to a continent, and more of a second-world country than a first-world one.

Moreover, the US system of government was designed to tilt the scales a bit in favor of rural areas than cities (that was maybe a fair trade-off a couple centuries ago). Combine that structural power dynamic with decades of rural depopulation as smart kids from small towns pursue opportunity in cities (I'm one) and it goes a long way towards explaining why we seem so crazy with our elected officials.

<comment><USER14> IMHO average population density is an almost meaningless number, because population density is not even close to a distribution where the mean is informative. I'm not sure whether it's the case in the US, but it's perfectly possible to have a tiny average population density and yet areas where small and medium towns are not too far apart from each other. You don't have to have rail service connection a tiny town in Arkansas to New York, it's sufficient if there is a train to the next city with its own cinema.

<comment><USER15> National population density in the US is misleading. Population density drops off sharply between the Rockies and somewhere around Iowa. East Coast states that we think of as mostly rural, like Virginia and Pennsylvania, have population densities that are squarely within the European range: 110 people/sq km in Pennyslvania vs. 106 in Hungary; 81 in Virginia vs. 82 in Romania. On the other hand, Utah (14) is less dense than Saudi Arabia (16) - both places are mostly desert.

Arkansas has a population density of 22 people/sq km, close to Sweden - <USER2> Arkansas is probably much less urbanized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If cities are rich because of high concentrations of capital and talent, then it really is a choice between living in a poor area and living in a rich one. You can't make the poor areas rich without giving them qualities of the rich areas, at which point they simply switch over and become "big cities".

<comment><USER17> Trouble is that while cities may be rich, the people living there are not.

It is true that cities are the likely home to those with incredible fortunes, but they are also home to many in abject poverty. In fact, while average incomes tend to be higher in big cities, median incomes in big cities tend to be _lower_. This suggests that you have some people doing _really_ well, and a whole lot of people doing not so great.

Which is all well and good if you are, say, a software developer and can move to the Bay Area to make $150,000+ per year, but that only describes a _very small_ segment of the population who are able to do that. The typical person is going to find themselves in the "not so great" category. McDonalds pays more or less the same whether you are in the big city or in a small town. The average rural (or urban, for that matter) resident is not going to become a software developer on a whim.

Moving from a poor area, where cost of living is generally lower (although not always), to a rich area, where cost of living is generally higher, does not mean that you, yourself, will become rich. For the average person, that only results in skyrocketing costs, leading to a reduction in quality of life.

<comment><USER11> >Moving from a poor area, where cost of living is generally lower (although not always), to a rich area, where cost of living is generally higher, does not mean that you, yourself, will become rich. For the average person, that only results in skyrocketing costs, leading to a reduction in quality of life.

Maybe? but there are claims that for those of us without education, how much we make depends largely on how many educated people we are near.

The location-based pay differential is much larger for people who don't have a college degree than for those who do.

That's a big part of why I am so stuck on the bay area; I don't have a degree, and I do really well here. All the offers I get from other parts of the country are terrible.

<comment><USER17> _> but there are claims that for those of us without education, how much we make depends largely on how many educated people we are near._

There are a lot of dubious claims about education though. I would take the whole thing with a grain of salt. Some even claim that gaining an education will result in earning more money, all while incomes have remained stagnant for decades upon decades and educational attainment has ballooned. How does one earn more money while also earning the same amount of money...?

What they are probably referring to is the fact that the education system filters out people who are less capable. Someone with, say, down syndrome is unfortunately unlikely to withstand the academic rigour required to graduate from college, and is unlikely to possess the traits that employers want to see in order to pay the big bucks, leaving the data to show that this person who did not graduate from college is also paid poorly. But it is faulty logic to think that if you don't graduate from college that you will contract down syndrome.

 _> That's a big part of why I am so stuck on the bay area; I don't have a degree, and I do really well here. All the offers I get from other parts of the country are terrible._

Your strong ties to the Bay Area suggest that you are probably involved in tech. Which is no doubt centred around the Bay Area, and pays less outside of the Bay Area no matter who you are. But what if all you knew was farming? Do you think you'd see a huge pay bump by moving your farm to the Bay Area (or any other major metropolis)?

<comment><USER11> >Your strong ties to the Bay Area suggest that you are probably involved in tech. Which is no doubt centred around the Bay Area, and pays less outside of the Bay Area no matter who you are. But what if all you knew was farming? Do you think you'd see a huge pay bump by moving your farm to the Bay Area (or any other major metropolis)?

If I inherited a bunch of debt-free land and equipment from my dad rather than a bunch of tech skills and contacts? sure, things would be very different. But I didn't, and agriculture is less than 2% of the labor force, and most of those people are hired workers, not the owner-operators, which is usually what we mean by "farmer" rather than "farm hand"

For that matter, the farmers of my famiy's ancestral lands? Both inherited family lands _and_ are highly educated. Yeah, there's still physical work involved, but figuring out how to operate these million dollar machines they use? at least as compex as operating the computers I use; and figuring how to fertalize and otherwise maintain the soil quality? I'd argue is probably a lot more complex, and higher risk.

<comment><USER17> Perhaps I wasn't clear, but my comment wasn't really about agriculture specifically. What I meant was that you are able to make more in the Bay Area doing tech than doing tech in points outside of the Bay Area because of it being the centre of tech. Farmers are able to make more in rural areas than they would doing farming in the city because rural areas are the centre of agriculture. Farmers would not make more money farming in the Bay Area simply due to it being a densely populated area. Quite the opposite. They would take a _massive_ pay cut if they tried.

<comment><USER11> ah, yes, that is completely true; some products are better produced in some areas than in other areas.

My argument is generalizing this to "if you fix things or otherwise provide services, you are better off fixing things or otherwise providing services to wealthy people than doing the same for people who are less wealthy" (edit: you can substitute "productive" for "wealthy" here, if you want to change 'are better off' to 'add more productivity to the system' in the previous sentence. Or you can leave it as-is, either way works, really.)

Which seems to me to follow, because my tech job involves a whole lot of "service" type fixing things for people. I'm a SysAdmin, and let me tell you, getting woken up in the middle of the night for a billion dollar product is way more renumerative (and better in other ways, too) than getting woken up in the middle of the night for a million dollar product.

My argument is that what I experience as a sysadmin would probably be pretty similar if I fixed cars instead; Fixing cars for wealthy people is likely to be a lot more renumerative than doing the same for people who aren't wealthy, and regardless of the direction of causality, the correlation between degrees and money is very strong; that's where I was going with my original point that as a dude without a degree who fixes things and helps people, I'm better off around educated people than otherwise.

Of course, you would be totally right to come back with other location based jobs; like if I were a mechanic, the path to income maximization would probably be to upgrade my skills to large diesel, and then move near some oil fields or something; jobs that are dependent on location are totally a thing. But most jobs depend on the people you are around more than any other location.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There are several comments here noting that small towns are pretty well wired. I'm fortunate to have just purchased a vacation home in rural Wisconsin (close to family). In DC, I have 100Mbps fiber, a free upgrade from FiOS from the 25Mbps I ordered, with the option to get a gigabit. At my other house, I have a 6Mbps DSL that only delivers 1.5Mbps at best, with a couple hundred Kbps upload. There's a cell tower only a mile away, but hills and trees obscure the signal; still with two bars I can get 20Mbps on my iPhone. Can I get a reasonable data plan? No. All the data plans cost a lot for a little, and throttle you to 2G after a hundred GB or so of download per month.

My hope is to spend a good portion of every summer working remotely in Wisconsin. I'll be hard-pressed to make video conferences and pairing sessions work, and I sure won't be streaming many shows for entertainment in the evenings.

<comment><USER4> Why didn't you buy a vacation home in a place that's better wired? We stayed at an AirBnB is Putnam County, NY recently that had very solid 100 Mbps cable. You can get 100 Mbps cable throughout Maryland's Eastern Shore, and Easton, a town of 15,000, is upgrading its municipal cable system to gigabit.

What does it say about the importance of high-speed broadband access as a differentiating factor that even someone in the tech industry will move somewhere without it? Is that a compelling fact for towns like Easton who believe that investing in municipal broadband will attract more residents?

<comment><USER13> Your question comes across as a bit rude. To answer it, because after half a year of looking, it was far closer to the ideal across a range of factors than anything else we'd found. I didn't really notice how terrible the DSL was until after we purchased.

The Eastern Shore in Maryland can be pretty rural, but it's still Maryland. Euston is 15,000; my place is between two villages, one of 900 and the other of 1600. In town, Internet access _is_ pretty decent. But the countryside is another matter.

Cities are economic powerhouses because they have network effects. My career has benefited from those network effects, and I think it would be a personal mistake for me to convert to a 100% remote position. But I can leverage a bit of that career capital to be remote sometime and take advantage of the vast cost differences between a coastal city and the rural Midwest, and get some lifestyle advantages from it (most importantly having my children see their extended family members far more frequently). I am going to have to invest a decent amount in equipment and services (e.g., MiFi, antenna, a router that'll support line sharing with the cell, VPS, etc.) to make it work. That's not to say "poor me," far from it, but simply to point out that rural broadband can really suck in some places. And I'm lucky in that the cell signal exists; lots of places it doesn't.

<comment><USER4> I'm trying to tease out what you value, in an economic sense. Khanna is proposing to spend a bunch of taxpayer money building fiber in rural areas, in hopes that it helps economically revitalize these places. But you're someone who _already works in tech_ , and judges a house to be "closer to the ideal across a range of factors" _even though it has nothing faster than DSL._ If someone who already has a need for fast connectivity won't use connectivity as a dispositive factor in deciding where to buy a house, how valuable can fiber access really be? If people won't pick Town A over Town B because Town A has much better connectivity, what does that say about the value of Town A spending a bunch of tax dollars to build a fiber network?

I think this is an important point, because we shouldn't make policy based on platitudes. If fiber really has the value the platitudes ascribe to it, we would see places with fiber being measurably more desirable than places without it.

<comment><USER13> Well, for me, it isn't about living there full-time, so the best possible connectivity wasn't the biggest consideration; advertised DSL goes up to 18Mbps or more, and discounting that ideal to, say, 8-10 Mbps would still leave me in okay shape. The other factors were things like: size of property (35+ acres), quality of property (trails, garden space, places for kids to play outside, natural beauty, conservation), the house, and a balanced location between different families as well as airports. I will admit that I was surprised my DSL was _so bad_, considering we weren't that far from town and not far away from a state highway.

I agree with you that spending tax money on fiber won't be a silver bullet for a rural community in terms of encouraging economic growth from the tech sector. It does help counteract the monopolistic rent-seeking behaviors of local telecom companies, however.

I'm semi-optimistic about fixed wireless in the coming years. We'll see about the Sprint/T-Mobile deal.

<comment><USER18> >I'm semi-optimistic about fixed wireless

I might be a bit pessimistic because WiMAX ended up being such a bust. OTOH, it seems as if consumer bandwidth needs are probably plateauing to a certain degree so another generation of wireless can possibly get things to a good enough point for many purposes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> More remote-first companies are the best way to bring jobs everywhere. Remote- first working is a separate and new skill that needs to be developed.

<comment><USER20> I'm not sure that there is enough demand for remote work. Many people enjoy and even require the social interactions provided at a workplace and don't want solitary remote work.

<comment><USER21> I'm currently at my third remote job. The first time, I was 29, newly single and I found it got old real fast. Moving back to an office environment was a major improvement for me. Fast forward 10 years, I'm married again, different living situation (in the city now) and I absolutely love the freedom and lifestyle of working remote again. There are a ton of factors involved but I suspect I'm not alone in finding remote work more appealing as I get older and more settled.

<comment><USER18> Much younger me worked in a very different environment with respect to communications, information availability, etc. of course. But I still can't really envision newly graduated me hanging out in my apartment and just communicating using my (then-nonexistent) laptop.

Today, I attend a lot of events, go into an office sometimes, have some off- sites, etc. But I'm much less interested in day-to-day coffees, lunches, work sports leagues, etc. than I once was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Digital nomads will go to places like Thailand where CoL is cheap and internet is fast, I wonder if a small town could emulate that experience. Doesn't have to be quite as cheap, but won't give you food poisoning and could be safer too.

<comment><USER23> I think a big part of the reason (western) digital nomads go to Southeast Asia is for the tropical weather and exoticism. It would be hard for small town America to replicate those experiences.

<comment><USER24> Exotic locations stop being so after you live in them for a few years. Time zone issues can end up as a real pain, which makes the US rather appealing.

Weather wise most of Florida is really cheap and Hawaii can be surprisingly affordable a few miles from the beach. So, I suspect the digital nomads living in Asia stereotype is more about them being interesting than that many people actually doing so.

<comment><USER23> Hawai'i is "surprisingly affordable" only relative to the Bay Area. All labor is at first-world American rates and so many things have to be shipped in.

Maybe it's an option for wealthy Silicon Valley escapees, but it's surely not a solution for the economic woes of middle America.

<comment><USER24> I am mostly talking digital nomads lifestyles.

You can buy a nice 2br condo for 50k. That's cheap compared to most major US cities. High speed internet for 50$/ month is generally available and you pay ~75c / lb to get computer equipment shipped out which is a minimal increase.

Mostly it's just food and energy prices that are a little high, but that's not nessisarily a huge budget item. 40k is easily comfortable if you don't need to travel or have kids.

That said, the median income is also significantly higher than the rest of the US. And things get crazy if you want to live near the ocean, and travel regularly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I come from a small town (a few thousand people). I was able to "get out" because I found a remote position.

I think that is the cheapest way — for the employer and employee —- to lift these these places up.

</comment><comment><USER26> Education is not the issue, in my experience - career opportunities are.

I work remotely and live in a rural area. To get my career to the point where I could reliably find remote work, I moved to Charlottesville, VA for five years.

Meanwhile, of the 20 or so people I've tracked down with two-year degrees intended to train them for tech jobs, exactly zero have done so. The primary problem that I see is that no one wants to hire a remote junior developer. Senior, sure, but never junior.

<comment><USER18> Speaking as someone who mostly works remotely (after multiple decades of working in an office most of the time), I have a lot of trouble envisioning coming out of school and sitting in an apartment at my computer all day. Sure, there are consulting jobs where you spend most of your days at a client site or otherwise don't work from an office much. Perhaps had I had a job like that I'd feel differently. But going straight from school to a fully remote engineering position would, I think, have been very difficult for me.

<comment><USER26> It would have been for me, too - without the school, though, as I didn't graduate.

That's my point. Where does someone in a rural area get the experience to make that transition effectively?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So, I believe the WVU Beckley campus was the formerly defunct Mountain State University. Closed in 2013.

</comment><comment><USER28> What a nice article. I'm a programmer living in a rural area (and am usually politically conservative.) I really didn't expect to see such an article in the NYT, especially authored by a politician from the left side of the aisle.

Brings a good start to 2019. Thanks, Rep. Khanna!

</comment><comment><USER29> > Shame on us for shipping over 211,000 of these jobs offshore to countries > like Malaysia and Brazil. Americans have an advantage in doing them because > of a cultural understanding of what businesses need and a more convenient > time zone.

> When some of the Beckley students asked me what more they should do to bring > tech, I joked that they would be wise to open up a few more Pakistani or > Indian restaurants.

So the idea is one should not be a valuable tech employee working for a US company from abroad, they should come to the country and wash the dishes for a few years first? No, thank you.

<comment><USER30> No

>I saw that spark in the Beckley [W.Va] students, many from coal mining families

It's quite the opposite: The joke was that the local US population should open those restaurants to attract tech talent to their towns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Ro Khanna is my hometown progressive. So..obviously..I distrust the politician representing us.

Why can't he do a better job with our multitude of problems? Bay Area is choking. In more ways than one.

Talking points is not the same as actually getting them done. It's just a way to get elected. Again.

Also..am I the only one who found the Indian-Pakistani restaurant quip offensive? This is why some of the rest of the country smirks at Californians. I am from the same region as he is..and I would NEVER make that comment in Beckley, W.Va. It's just..well...rude.

<comment><USER32> >Ro Khanna is my hometown progressive. So..obviously..I distrust the politician representing us.

As someone not from the Bay Area, will you please explain why this is obvious?

> Why can't he do a better job with our multitude of problems?

Perhaps because he has only been in Congress since 2016 and in that time, the Democrats have been in the minority and mostly powerless to do much of anything

<comment><USER31> Because local constituents have a front row seat wherein we hear what politicians say and what they do and how they do it.

In any average Silicon Valley town(or college town for that matter) where there are more non voting residents than those who can vote, the policies are geared towards everyone and usually not in the interest of those who are long term residents and have voted and have paid taxes.

So politicians have to deliver for both the voting and non voting constituents, but they have to convince the voters to choose what's sometimes not in their best interest.

This is the reason most politicians lie or back track. It is a most superior skill to be able to convince people to choose what isn't in their best interest. In California..and especially the Silicon Valley mega region, politicians of all stripe have honed this skill to a fine art form.

<comment><USER33> > So politicians have to deliver

Why do they have to deliver for people who don't vote for them? If they're some altruist who wants to do the Right Thing (TM), wouldn't they get replaced real quick by someone who knows who their constituents really are?

But even assuming that they do, why is that so wrong? You make it sound like it's terrible to think about our neighbours, whether they can vote or not.

<comment><USER31> They deliver promises to people who can't vote because they spend money and earn money and pay taxes anyways.

An elected politician is not a monarch or a benevolent dictator or an altruistic philanthropist. He is a representative of those who voted for him.

And re: why is this wrong? Because the politicians necessarily have to lie and or fudge facts or back track on promises because there is a fundamental conflict of interest.

A great example of this is California Proposition 1A aka Governer Brown's bullet train to nowhere. Voters approved $9 billion bond money in 2008. The estimate is 77 billion now. And nothing is done.

That's money we could have spent locally and to improve our roads and infrastructure. There is no more local governance and only the tyranny of regional governance. We are not homogenized constituents and our needs vary greatly.

Another example is school funding and LCFF..local control funding formula. Which is anything but as it's a melting pot of school funding and then redistribution. Schools in highly taxed..high density cities are deteriorating with their infrastructure crumbling. With education tied to property taxes, there is so much pressure to create more and more housing stock in Silicon Valley towns that are already beyond carrying capacity. Afterall, a 2 million $ matchbox condo home sold in Cupertino delivers more tax $$$ to the state coffers than a home in Manteca..so why build roads and maintain freeways and create networked public transport to allow the work force to move freely?

<comment><USER34> I see that you're not a fan, but there are many among us who support HSR and more housing in places like Cupertino. The fact that it's $2 million indicates it's desperately needed.

Though I agree that HSR has been suboptimal. I'd have preferred to have a massive improvement in medium speed rail than a focus on HSR specifically - just make the Coast Starlight take 8 hours from downtown SF to DTLA, not 13, and you'd have a reasonably viable service.

<comment><USER31> Do you have any example of higher density real estate development leading to affordable housing? High density only seems to stress existing resources and infrastructure while making cost of living more unaffordable.

It's baffling. And yet, we keep buying the myth of high density sustainability. This year is going to be the year I give up all delusions and stop being naive.

<comment><USER35> It's a complex question. Higher-density areas _are_ more affordable, other things being equal. They're also a lot more _desirable_ and appealing than the lower-density alternative, and _this_ is what can make them "less affordable" to some, while still being quite easily affordable to others. They have inbuilt gentrification potential. But gentrification is a great thing - <USER3> directly translates into a better quality of life! And if it spreads sufficiently, to the point that "higher density" is not a rarity anymore, it doesn't even _have_ to mean high rents.

<comment><USER31> [https://datasmart.ash.harvard.edu/news/article/where-is- gent...](https://datasmart.ash.harvard.edu/news/article/where-is- gentrification-happening-in-your-city-1055) : it seems like gentrification means displacement of existing population that is lower income. It doesn't address affordability. Cupertino doesn't need to be more gentrified by becoming high density. Average condo price was 1 million ten years ago. How is high density in already affordable places more sustainable? Example:Oakland. Oakland was a poorer part of Bay Area and because of its proximity to San Francisco is becoming more gentrified and has even more high density buildings now. It displaces older long time poorer Oakland residents who were already living in a high density town.

Let's take public school spending: OUSD spends average of $14534 per student. [http://educate78.org/much-money-ousd-spend/](http://educate78.org/much-money- ousd-spend/) ..it's spending has been increasing steadily as it gentrifies and its population gets displaced. They are always in debt.

[http://www.ed-data.org/district/Alameda/Fremont-Unified](http://www.ed- data.org/district/Alameda/Fremont-Unified) : I searched for Fremont. The one that is currently being converted to super high density.

This random search re Cupertino public school system and it turned out to be in Quora: [https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-approximate-per-year- expe...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-approximate-per-year-expenses-of- Cupertino-public-schools-vs-Challenger-Stratford) ..

Here is an even more brutal question of someone with $400k and can't make it by buying a good school district home: [https://www.quora.com/How-can-I- survive-in-the-Bay-Area-with...](https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-survive-in- the-Bay-Area-with-400k-family-income-Even-with-this-kind-of-salary-we-are- unable-to-buy-a-single-family-home-in-Cupertino-We-want-Cupertino's-good- schools-and-shorter-commute-Any-suggestions-for-investments-or-business) : I had mentioned this elsewhere on HN(diff thread) about how children's education is now based on speculation because property taxes are tied to public schools and their excellence. Rich parents donate or obtain private coaching classes. (The first answer is what makes it brutal)

I have a few more examples of other cities. But a quick search spits out shocking contradictions which only tells me why high density is a myth and that it was never meant to be a true solution.

This is the corroding of middle class. And this is how pitchfork factories get started.

I don't know a single example in the Bay Area where high density has translated to sustainability. Or affordability. It only increase taxes and outgoing funds to the tax coffers in Sacramento.

An expected side effect(and probably planned one) is an increase in govt employees ..so basically all the revenue generated goes to the care and feeding of public sector employees that has left ginormous unfunded tax liabilities of these union backed employees. The city manager of san Jose makes 700k and fremont city manager makes 500k. The new one is this guy [http://tbrnews.com/news/manhattan-beach-dismisses-city- manag...](http://tbrnews.com/news/manhattan-beach-dismisses-city-manager-mark- danaj-without-cause/article_4bedfef0-f174-11e7-b704-cfae1efec280.html) ... no one in fremont knew that this was the story behind their city manager. Why? Because they were all stuck in grid lock traffic trying to get back home while not being able to participate in the running of their city their tax dollars built. This is the reality of Bay Area.

There are no slum lords. Even the slum lords have to pay the piper. The real winner is the govt. this is the reality of gentrified Bay Area.

<comment><USER36> One of your Quora links is notorious Internet anger man Michael O'Church. He hates everything about the Bay Area tech industry and so his views are ridiculously flamebaity. His statements have low signal.

<comment><USER31> I don't know what to say about that. I figured there were a multitude of opinions in Quora forums.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Improvement to YOUR life always comes from YOU. If someone else does something it is to improve THEIR life. They will certainly tell you that it will be good for you, but in the end your advantage would only be a nice-to-have side effect. If you feel the money is passing you by without you getting a share then YOU need to find out how to change. For instance by learning how to do "tech stuff".

And then, when there are a bunch of people who really want to improve actual problems arise. E.g. universities being too expensive for them. Even free online courses require some level of basic skill to start use them. How to get the funds for the equipment. And of course the technicl infrastructure to provide electricity, infrastructure and basic living needs one can't provide for when one spends 10 hours crunching technical problems.

These are problems I hoped to find answers for in the article, or at least suggestions. People being too proud to accept the new status quo and hoping for more icing on their apparently already tasty enough cake before they start moving their asses, that is nothing. Even if they get it they won't start moving. Cake makes fat and lazy.

I personally feel a lot of the mid-level towns in Western countries (not just in the US of A) actually have a good starting point. Roads and trains are already government supported and therefore good enough quality or better. Super markets and a few restaurants are there already as well. Internet is there, although it's maybe not the highest speed. Schools and libraries have some computers and wifi access if they want to. Office rent and land prices are cheap. Also with the internet location itself is less and less important, which is why so many administrative and create jobs can be outsourced. They could be outsourced to your town as well, if you could find a way to compete. No need to be close to natural resources, in a trade hub like a coastal town, etc. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, with road and internet access is totally fine to start competing.

The only thing that is really missing badly is people moving their asses. They have a tv and enough money to buy beer. The car repair every once in a while is quite painful, but otherwise they don't feel motivated to do anything with their life. Some won't even travel to a nearby coastal town for a weekend on the beach or something.

In the meantime I'm friends with a Chinese cook who works for $100/month a 14h/7day cooking job and then after that at home spends time learning how to code to make more money and work fewer hours. I mean, if our rural folks could get up to do half of that, then they would be able to work a $50k remote work web/app developer position in no time, and _boom_ they are part of the "tech elite".</comment>