Ask HN: How many people on Hacker News live in rural areas?

I'm a camp host for the forest service during the summer. I use my e-bike to explore closed logging roads looking for gold. The highway into town is dangerous so I haven't used it to go shopping yet. Maybe next summer. Frankly, I'd love to live in a walkable urban area with a university and a library nearby. I'll never be able to afford that. For the winter, I live in an inexpensive house in a walkable city in Mexico. No university, no library, and no community of similar minded Yankees. It's the best I can do.

I was born and live in Western Australia, a state almost half the land area of Australia, three times larger than Texas, with a population of ~ 2 million most of whom live in and around the one big city in the south west corner.

I grew up in the Kimberley on cattle stations, went to high school in the Pilbarra , and travelled 1,000 km to university (1980s).

I did a lot of STEM courses, built robots, remote signal aquisition instrumentation, pre Google Maps global mapping software (and data processing) travelled the world (two thirds or so of the 190+ countries) zeroing in WGS84 against old mapping systems and doing a bit of exploration geophysics.

I currently mostly live in the wheatbelt district, large farms you can shoot 5,000+ yards across (*), and live a fairly rural lifestyle - with drones, GPS controlled two storey machines, multi spectral crop imaging, etc.

(*) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7owwTz7Z0OE

We like walking and do a bit of track maintenance (**) and prefer motorbikes over cars (***)

(**) https://www.bibbulmuntrack.org.au/

(***) https://youtu.be/mdx5xttosxY?t=124

Loving life in the woods, 1 acre in the sticks, with gigabit fiber and squirrels. It’s peaceful and productive.

I spent 53 years in a big city, and finally moved to a rural area. Tired of all the commotion, congestion, pollution and stress, and watch wild blackberries, strawberries, mushrooms grow, trees and flowers blossom, orchard bloom and give fruit, pheasants and deer entering the property and observing natures life cycle. My wife although hesitant is now peaceful with life. And I’m an embedded software developer, do Haiku OS and robotics for fun. My lifestyle is 8 hours professional work (from home), and on average an hour a day looking after the estate. And an hour each evening sitting on the veranda with a glass if wine watching the sunset. And this costs me 50% of a cramped appartment in the city.

And at this moment at the airport waiting for takeoff for a business meeting.

There are more than a few - there just aren't as many opportunities to talk about it in the context of tech news as compared to city or suburban living.