Too Poor to Afford the Internet • Hacker News Board

Re: Too Poor to Afford the Internet

#101

Post by gozur88 » Sat, Aug 13, 2016, 12:13 AM UTC

lake99 wrote: post #40

drops wrote: post #13

Interesting. I live in a country with a minimum wage of $58 a month (Ukraine) and yet the internet is one of the few things that pretty much anyone can afford: high speed connections (50-100mbps) cost about $2-4; rarely more. Are american high prices the result of scummy pricing on the corporations' side or is it an actual infrastructural issue that prevents the ISPs from providing cheap connections to everyone?

Now I understand why Russian-speakers dominate many gaming communities. I pay around 20$ for an 8mbps connection, with a monthly download limit of about 50GB. Now you know why there won't be Indians competing in global e-leagues for a long time to come.

I, for one, look forward to the day I can learn to swear in languages other than Russian and Tagalog.

But why is it relatively more expensive? Have Indian companies rigged the rules such that they don't have to compete with each other? I thought Indian labor was relatively inexpensive.

Re: Too Poor to Afford the Internet

#102

Post by massysett » Sat, Aug 13, 2016, 12:27 AM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #98

I question the premise. I cannot think of anything I do online at home that is essential to my being a productive member of society. 90% of my internet use at home is for entertainment. It's today's cable TV. It's not essential.

Many government services are offered over the Internet. My county government has an app I use to request services. I find information about state government services such as motor vehicles. The school system has an extensive online portal for parents. They post grades there.

Sure you can do all this with no Internet. But it will take much longer, requiring phone calls or in person visits.

Plus, want to try applying for a job with no Internet?

A person with no Internet at home (or on a phone, etc.) is doomed to be much less productive.

Re: Too Poor to Afford the Internet

#103

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 13, 2016, 12:27 AM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #98

I question the premise. I cannot think of anything I do online at home that is essential to my being a productive member of society. 90% of my internet use at home is for entertainment. It's today's cable TV. It's not essential.

[deleted]

Re: Too Poor to Afford the Internet

#104

Post by JustSomeNobody » Sat, Aug 13, 2016, 12:27 AM UTC

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…

Can I just say how much more civil the comments are here on HN re: libraries as opposed to, say, the last article I read on reddit[0] re: the subject. Seems the only thing they could do is complain about the homeless.

[0]https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/4txauf/internet_cant...

Re: Too Poor to Afford the Internet

#105

Post by Jach » Sat, Aug 13, 2016, 12:28 AM UTC

QuarterReptile wrote: post #95

Jach wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A math course without a computer is not a modern math course. Humans are not going to advance the field, or even keep up to date, when it is insisted that students do everything their equally intelligent predecessors did plus new things. Something has got to go, and top of my list is a vast amount of pen and paper bullshit.

I'm assuming you don't have experience with this sort of computer integration. It's just using web portals to give problems with varied values (so students don't all have the same answers) and grading. It changes little about the problems, except in that the websites can be extremely frustrating when the right answer is 0.2 and 1/5 is wrong (without asking for a decimal.) You're still solving manually, but the gradin…

I'm familiar with the systems, I programmed one in high school. (Fortunately it didn't get used beyond some demos.) I liked Khan Academy's software when I looked at it years ago, though. But that's not what I mean by having a computer be a major part in the math classroom and ideally in homework, I was mainly addressing the weird idea of learning math with just pencil and paper. I was trying to remember a quote writing the last comment, found it now from http://theodoregray.com/BrainRot whose good first half (before the violent video games talk) is where I probably first developed the sentiment: "A math classroom without a computer is a joke."

Math builds on other math, and some amount of rote memorization and tedious by-hand work can sometimes be necessary to reach that 'aha!' moment where you understand the thing and its uses abstractly, and some of it can be useful to retain since you can do things by inspection. But so much could be cut. For instance, partial fraction expansion (mathematicians feel free to correct me) might just be wholely useless outside the group of people who enjoy such manual manipulation -- just have your computer do the inverse Laplace transform and get on with what you really want to do. Or have your computer do the expansion at the very least. More students could even reach the concept of Laplace transforms (my bet would be before high school) if they weren't slowed by so much tedium in earlier material.

Re: Too Poor to Afford the Internet

#106

Post by crazy1van » Sat, Aug 13, 2016, 1:11 AM UTC

justinph wrote: post #80

escherize wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Do you actually believe the public school system's goal is to educate children? Absolutely. It doesn't work out perfect every time in every place, but it does a pretty amazing job of that given the poor level of funding and constant bashing from the entitled anti-union right. Freeing up parents is a wonderful side effect that has worked out pretty well for contemporary society. If you're surprised that kids going t…

> given the poor level of funding

Do you have a source for this? According to an OECD study I found, the US spends among the most in the world per pupil on education.

https://data.oecd.org/eduresource/education-spending.htm http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/apr/21/jeb...

Re: Too Poor to Afford the Internet

#107

Post by crazy1van » Sat, Aug 13, 2016, 1:15 AM UTC

linkregister wrote: post #70

rayiner wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of the cost of any kind of infrastructure is labor, which scales with local wages.[1] A New York subway ticket is about $2.75. That's about 11x more than the cost of a ticket on the Kiev Metro. And it's not like the New York subway makes a profit--fares cover only about half the system's operating costs.[2] In Baltimore, I paid about $50 for a 50mbps connection, or about 20x more than a subway ticke…

How did you get that $50/50Mbps deal in Baltimore? Was this part of a bundle for cable television?

It was remarkable how much the price per Mbps dropped in the area once Verizon FIOS entered the market. Just one real competitor to Comcast made a substantial difference.

Re: Too Poor to Afford the Internet

#108

Post by adrusi » Sat, Aug 13, 2016, 1:17 AM UTC

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #104

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…

Can I just say how much more civil the comments are here on HN re: libraries as opposed to, say, the last article I read on reddit[0] re: the subject. Seems the only thing they could do is complain about the homeless. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/4txauf/internet_cant...

Are you suggesting that it's not a legitimate grievance? Unless people are lying about, for instance, people watching porn in libraries, it does seem like there's a problem with the civility of that discussion. I haven't seen anything like that in my area, but I have seen lines of 16 or so desks being used as arcades, which can be okay so long as people remain quiet. But I've seen people have to ask gamers to leave in order to do something presumably more in-line with the goals of the library, which many people, especially kids, will be too shy to do.

In theory, public libraries have been meant for people from all walks of life since their inception. But computer media have made them useful for a lot more things than intellectual pursuits, and it does seem reasonable that this would concern people. It's their taxes paying for it after all.

It would be nice if people on reddit would reflect on why it bothers them that people come to the library on drugs and watch porn, but reddit doesn't have a culture of people writing out three-paragraph justifications for their opinions. I thought that it was pretty clear, though, what people are actually bothered by from the comments you uncharitably labeled "complaining about the homeless".

Re: Too Poor to Afford the Internet

#109

Post by cema » Sat, Aug 13, 2016, 2:00 AM UTC

drops wrote: post #13

Interesting. I live in a country with a minimum wage of $58 a month (Ukraine) and yet the internet is one of the few things that pretty much anyone can afford: high speed connections (50-100mbps) cost about $2-4; rarely more. Are american high prices the result of scummy pricing on the corporations' side or is it an actual infrastructural issue that prevents the ISPs from providing cheap connections to everyone?

Proportionally, the price may be comparable. For example, in Massachusetts, the current minimal wage is $10 per hour which translates into about $1700 monthly. 50-100 Mbps in Comcast can be had for about $40-60. Now, a monthly subscription of $2 out of $58 is 1/29, and $1700/29 = $58.

Of course, not all components of the prices translate proportionally. Salaries probably do, equipment probably does not.

Re: Too Poor to Afford the Internet

#110

Post by astronautjones » Sat, Aug 13, 2016, 2:01 AM UTC

distances wrote: post #23

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…

In Finland many public libraries nowadays have even 3D printers and film slide scanners, and arrange training sessions for their use. It's really a wonderful system, and probably not even that expensive considering the learning potential for even the disadvantaged citizens.

This is even popular in the Southeastern US, which is pretty incredible.