Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 582 posts

Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?

#491

Post by samstave »

braingenious wrote: post #442
honkdaddy wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please be more clear with what you're trying to say then? You obviously feel very strongly about pontifier and his past, given the amount of time you spent digging into his background, what is the point you are actually trying to make here? Be as direct as possible, please :)

I asked if the OP was the same person that was posting on Twitter, as what was posted there was a different tone from what was posted on HN. He answered in the affirmative. I did not spend much time “digging into his background”, I clicked a link and read a few posts. Why do you care? Be as direct as possible, please :)

TBF, there was an SWE on here a few years back and asked a sob story about how he cant find work and needs help, and a bunch of us pored over his request and posts, and it was only after I (and other) did basic DD - we found he was a convicted child sex offender.

:-(

So, we always want to help - I mean, FFS - people who develop tech/sw/hw/etc are actually looking at giving the fruits of their efforts out to the world, social support is no different...

But at times quick to help without judging the requestor past (HELLO PAC contributions :-))

Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?

#492

Post by samstave »

braingenious wrote: post #488
honkdaddy wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll bite - I only care because I think it’s important for others to see what your intentions are here. Now that I’ve answered your question, can you answer mine? :) If I wanted to, I’m sure I could Google some of your online identities and find a post your made in the past and then asked in a public forum if you’re the same person. I wouldn’t do that because I think it’s a bit creepy and impolite, but if I had a ver…

I actually misunderstood the wording, I’m now aware that he only bought 17 acres + 75 more properties in the area. As for the weird threat of embarrassment… what? I literally just asked if he used the same username on both websites. As for why I asked, I’ll answer again: his post on HN had a different tone from his posts on the bird site, and I wanted to know if they gave context to his post or were unrelated. For ex…

I think I should TM Smooth-BrainGenius and sell it to anyone on twitter I can muster a nickle out of.

Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?

#493

Post by phpnode »

ryanmercer wrote: post #478
KennyBlanken wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "benforbars" site has all the hallmarks of a free-energy nutjob complete with comic sans font and MSpaint images. Between that and the tweet whining about how hard email is to set up (!) this dude isn't qualified to run a Subway franchise, certainly not multiple internet companies.

I went through 6 months of his tweets and, yeah, he either doesn't have a grip on reality, has some sort of mental health issue, or is just constantly trying to run some angle. - Yup, the free energy fonts and conspiratorial claims about video of his fusion reactor being suppressed - It looks like he bought a bunch of people's property for pennies on the dollar, then raised funds from those same people to return thei…

I don't think you're being particularly charitable in this thread - at the very least you're misrepresenting what he's said publicly.

Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?

#494

Post by Eupraxias »

notatoad wrote: post #422
Eupraxias wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rural Vermont. The story is worthy of a screenplay. Small town starts to tax a family for the commercial water line in a general store that closed in the 60's, that happens to be on the property, because, small town. Family has visions of a B&B, vineyard, wedding venue. Everything down the drain in the end, because lawyers are expensive. Still there to this day: worn out stencil on the window of the 'general store'.…

giving the town tax money isn't going to do it. you need to make the people in the town richer, and most of the people aren't going to see a dollar of that tax money. at least, not directly or in the short term.

The family in this situation had business plans that would have done just that, (B&B and a wedding venue), in a town of 300 where there is only a restaurant (catering) and a general store (everything else). The family sourced and bought everything not just locally, but from the town and surrounding farms (all dairy, meat, and produce)

The tax was imposed to get the family out of the town, and it worked - the family is not rich. In the end, they had to sell their family home (which had been in the family since the 1930's) and leave (which they did).

They were taxed out because the family is notoriously progressive, and the town is very much the opposite. There was cultural friction. Keep in mind that this was 20 years ago. These were very polite 60's era hippies, all college-edumacated and everything - and the (very small, very tight) town didn't want them in it.

The town hall imposed a (crazy) tax, and they had to leave.

Depending on where you are, some value preserving a local culture over 'getting richer'.

Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?

#495

Post by anm89 »

braingenious wrote: post #485
anm89 wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did you feel hatred for him after reading my post? No, why would I?

I don’t know either, that’s why I asked. If I were drumming up hate maybe you would’ve experienced it.

No, your attempt failed.

Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?

#496

Post by pclmulqdq »

pontifier wrote: post #471
pclmulqdq wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, it looks like he isn't going about trying to work with the city very well. He also has videos on there of him lecturing public officials about how slow they are. At the same time, he is trying to build a fusion generator, a science museum, an industrial space, and a few internet businesses that seem to need a secure facility. The planning commission probably has no idea what to do with him, and it doesn't s…

How can I run a serious business if I can't use the warehouse I bought? Why can't I use it? Because the city won't let me. I'm not the only one. This guy, Garland Trice, had his building demolished by the city because he failed to repair it. Why did he fail to repair it? Because the city would not give him permits. It's SO RIDICULOUS here! They've closed down the movie theater because they wanted to bring in their ow…

I don't know much about this town, but I will say that your approach of yelling at people won't work. It rarely does. My suggestion is that you at least act like you care about their concerns. Go to their meetings. Even a few that are unrelated to your building permits. When their offices are open, go to ask them what they need to hear from you. Be nice. Ask people what they want. Make them feel comfortable. Be prepared to say "sorry" a lot.

Politics in small towns is about relationships. You need to build them if you want to build anything else. There's a reason you got this building for a deep discount: it's going to cost you a lot of time to get anything done. You didn't pay a lot of money for this building, and that was for a reason: you're going to have to pay in other resources.

Alternatively, if you're going to yell, you need to back it up with some persuasion. In this case, legal threats from actual lawyers (no pulling a C&D letter off the internet and changing a few things - you need your threats to be legit). That is going to get expensive very quickly, but it may work - small towns don't have a lot of legal resources and neither do their residents. The guy whose building got demolished for not doing disallowed repairs probably has a big payout waiting if he sues.

Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?

#497

Post by scyzoryk_xyz »

pontifier wrote: post #434
ryanmercer wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It took me about 4 minutes to find out that he was robbed for the ~15th time, You do realize between his comments here, and a cursory look at his Twitter, he's told about 57 tall tales too many, right? If it was such a bad experience, why did he go on to buy an alleged SEVENTY-FIVE more properties there for starters? Because the bulk, if not all, of this is probably entirely made up. I mean, the guy claims he's deve…

I'm happy to verify anything. It's easy to type my last name "Fenley" into the county website at: https://www.actdatascout.com/RealProperty/Arkansas/Jefferson And see the property I bought and what I paid for it. You can find out more about my fusion reactor at http://www.DDproFusion.com My YouTube has tons of videos of my experiences here. http://YouTube.com/pontifier I even started recording all my interactions wit…

You have me at fusion reactor.

Stranger than fiction

Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?

#498

Post by winrid »

pontifier wrote: post #428
a2tech wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a process problem. The correct order to do things is: pull permit to fix plumbing, that permit will allow you to connect to the city water for testing purposes once you've proven the system will hold pressure (initial inspection), then when you're connected to the water an additional inspection will be done to verify working plumbing, if thats the only outstanding issue you can apply for a certificate of occu…

The city will not issue the permits to do the work. FULL STOP. I literally already have a city water connection and it's costing me a hundred bucks a month just to sit there unused because I can't get the permits to fix the plumbing... So what would you do in that situation?

I know a lot of businesses that just put up brown paper and do the construction in secret because local governments are such a PITA.

Im not offering advice... but I see this often.

Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?

#499

Post by braingenious »

anm89 wrote: post #495
braingenious wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know either, that’s why I asked. If I were drumming up hate maybe you would’ve experienced it.

No, your attempt failed.

I am glad that we’ve agreed that I did not drum up any hate. Thank you for clarifying this.

Re: Ask HN: How to find a small town to relocate for remote work?

#500

Post by quickthrower2 »

pm215 wrote: post #373
TrueGeek wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife and I just spent a month in the UK to see how we’d like it and if we’d want to move there. If you are willing to commute 40 mins (by train) there are plenty of towns with 2 bed apartments for £400k.

A 2 bed flat for 400K is definitely what I would call expensive housing! It may not be central-London prices but it's certainly high, and unaffordable for many people.

Was going to post a counterexample, but in the time I have been out of the UK ... man the prices have gone up a lot! You can probably get a 1 bed for 200k but that is not cheap. For an American it might be OK (GBP seems to have lost a lot of value)

If you need affordability you would need to move away from the south east. As a digital nomad ... you can!

Post reply on HN