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

Too Poor to Afford the Internet

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 158 posts

Re: Too Poor to Afford the Internet

#81

Post by dragonwriter »

chatmasta wrote: post #76
superuser2 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have to be, as a condition of their journal subscriptions. Librarians generally want to extend access as far as possible, but they are terrified of pissing off a publisher and getting a journal taken away from their entire university's community of researchers who need it to do their work.

If the universities really cared about open access, they could unionize against the publishers. Imagine the top 20 schools, which also happen to be the ones producing the research, refused to abide by the publisher rules. Would they all have their access revoked? It's never made sense to me why, despite billions of dollars budgeted toward scientific funding, private companies make money charging for journal access. W…

> If the universities really cared about open access, they could unionize against the publishers.

If universities really, really cared, they could band together and set up their own journal publishing organization (many universities do have their own academic publishing arms, but a single-university journal publisher probably would be harder to establish respect for than one sponsored by a broad coalition of major universities.)

Re: Too Poor to Afford the Internet

#82

Post by justinph »

gumby wrote: post #22

Another huge aspect of poverty and internet access is the increasing number of households who don't have wifi but use only their phones for internet access. ("one-quarter of those earning below the median income and one-third of those living below poverty level accessed the Internet only through their mobile devices." https://theconversation.com/many-low-income-students-use-onl... and if you want more http://qz.com/5…

Karen McGrane gave a great talk about just this issue. She made the very valid point that many employment portals are neglected backwaters and don't have mobile friendly or responsive designs, making them unusable on phones. That effectively cuts off employers from huge chunks of potential employees and verges on not being equal-opportunity employers.

Re: Too Poor to Afford the Internet

#83

Post by uxp100 »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #32
jawns wrote: post #10

Can I just say how much I love the way public libraries have navigated themselves into the digital age? They are, as this piece points out, very popular places to access computers and the Internet, and many libraries offer a wealth of digital content. I can check out and instantly download e-books and audiobooks and movies from my library. It's certainly conceivable that they might have transitioned less well. There…

Plus having a library card often gets you access (even remote access!) to lots of expensive services - I use the OED, J-stor, etc. from home with gusto. I will say there's a small dark side to having gone digital, many libraries have culled a lot of their holdings, and/or can't afford to buy as many books as they once did (have to pay for those licenses somehow...). It's likely that there's less demand, but it still…

RE: culling, Yeah, there is stuff (I notice manga not reprinted since the 90s, they didn't hold up physically that well and they loaned mainly to teens) that I remember being common that has been culled.

e.g. My library system doesn't have a copy of any of the volumes of "Please Save My Earth," and that was a title that many libraries had if they had any manga at all, in my experience.

Re: Too Poor to Afford the Internet

#84

Post by cpr »

escherize wrote: post #68
koolba wrote: post #51

> They’re there during the school year, too, even during the winter — it’s the only way they can complete their online math homework. Why is there homework online? Has this been shown to be better in any way for children learning math or just a cop out by lazy teachers to be able to automatically grade the assignments? I can't imagine learning math with anything besides a pencil and paper (yes even calculators are mo…

Do you actually believe the public school system's goal is to educate children? More like freeing up parents to go to work (and tax), and employing teachers and administrators. It's nearly impossible to fire teachers, thanks to a public sector union who's got their back. School is like a prison for kids. One form of punishment is detention - more school. Also, "In the 2000 report, commissioned by the American Associa…

John Taylor Gatto, the NY State Teacher of the Year in 2000-ish (not sure of year), wrote "Dumbing Us Down" from years teaching in some of the worst (and best) NYC classrooms, and doing wonderful things for his kids all the while.

His thesis is that the public school system is pretty much doing what it was founded to do in the 19th century: to hone down kids to be good, obedient, unthinking factory workers and military, to the lowest common denominator.

His "Underground History of American Education" expands on that quite a bit.

Most definitely worth reading.

Re: Too Poor to Afford the Internet

#85

Post by qaq »

walrus01 wrote: post #79
qaq wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be it as it may the quality of service is way better then what I can get with Comcast at about 1/10th the price :)

Your shitty last mile DOCSIS3 connection over 20+ year old coaxial copper is not a reflection of the quality of an ISP backbone... I realize that from a customer perspective the two are indistinguishable, but if you look at the quality of the router/switch equipment used by the top 50 ASNs (ordered by CAIDA ASRank) for major north american ISPs, it's vastly more expensive than what's used in countries where ISPs don'…

What benefit is it to me :)? In all seriousness we run things in US and Ukraine and while in theory you would expect there would be some tangible differences given the concerns you outline in reality they are not there. Major backbone providers also use cisco and juniper gear and are about as reliable as stateside providers. Residential providers due to intense competition offer way better service at a small fraction of the cost.

Re: Too Poor to Afford the Internet

#86

Post by Cyph0n »

hnburnsy wrote: post #55
Cyph0n wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comcast charges $20 for its cheapest plan (10 Mbps), which increases to $50 after the first year. It's the only option on my area.

Comcast Internet Essentials - 10 Mbps Internet service for just $9.95 a month + tax - No activation fees and no equipment rental fees - Option to purchase a computer for just $149.99 + tax - Access to free Internet training online, in print and in person - A wireless gateway, delivering in-home WiFi at no additional cost https://customer.xfinity.com/help-and-support/internet/comca...

Oh yep, you are right. Thanks for linking.

Re: Too Poor to Afford the Internet

#87

Post by jaydz »

hiharryhere wrote: post #16
jawns wrote: post #10

Can I just say how much I love the way public libraries have navigated themselves into the digital age? They are, as this piece points out, very popular places to access computers and the Internet, and many libraries offer a wealth of digital content. I can check out and instantly download e-books and audiobooks and movies from my library. It's certainly conceivable that they might have transitioned less well. There…

Replying from the NY Public Library in Nolita. Couldn't agree more, the crowd here is a real melting pot. Students, kids, old folk, rich, poor. I also like the opportunity to get on with work in a quiet place without feeling obliged to buy a coffee.

In New York you have access to lynda.com, just need a library card and pin. https://www.lynda.com/portal/patron

Re: Too Poor to Afford the Internet

#88

Post by jpindar »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #11

Is it really $50 per month for basic internet in New York? In the UK https://www.uswitch.com/broadband/packages/ shows the cheapest broadband package - which includes telephone line rental - to be £18 per month (average across the contract when delivered router is included). That's around $25 (you can get "free" with a telephone service). What struck me was the kid in the header image has a swanky new laptop, the sto…

People do share wifi all the time. More so in densely populated areas, of course.

Re: Too Poor to Afford the Internet

#89

Post by Fej »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #61
koolba wrote: post #51

> They’re there during the school year, too, even during the winter — it’s the only way they can complete their online math homework. Why is there homework online? Has this been shown to be better in any way for children learning math or just a cop out by lazy teachers to be able to automatically grade the assignments? I can't imagine learning math with anything besides a pencil and paper (yes even calculators are mo…

School systems and colleges love these online services because they do most of the legwork (grading and grade management) completely automatically, which allows the instructor to have much larger section sizes (without having to hire grading staff). Pearson, the leading provider of these, likes to market them as better for teaching but everyone in education understands that what they're actually better for is bottom-…

Don't worry about making Pearson sound vaguely evil. The level of hate for Pearson, Wiley, and the like on my campus would make Hitler blush.

I do not use the word "hate" lightly. It is a strong word.

Post reply on HN