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Ask HN: Are there any rural tech communities?

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Re: Ask HN: Are there any rural tech communities?

#151

Post by toast0 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #100
toast0 wrote: post #23

Some of the Seattle 'suburbs' get fairly rural, lots of trees, at least some lots are a couple acres, a few working farms, lots of hobby farms, but still have a lot of tech workers. If remote work is important to you, check out internet options. There's a chance of Comcast and CenturyLink, but both get shifty about actually servicing homes in places (Comcast won't run a drop to my house even though their cable is on…

We have similar issues with CL out here in rural NM. One interesting alternative are both commercial and cooperative microwave-based almost-mesh networks. We just signed up with one that ultimately ties back into CL somewhere, but is the only way the its 4000 members would get internet within a 400 square mile area.

Line of sight systems are pretty iffy out here, trees and hills mean you probably don't have LOS to anywhere (great for privacy, not great for wireless isps)

Re: Ask HN: Are there any rural tech communities?

#152

Post by stevenicr »

julianlam wrote: post #53
mdasen wrote: post #48

> I've heard that people tend to be very different to those you find in a city In a lot of cases this is true - and it's not just about tech. Rural communities are often more religious, more conservative, lower income, lower educated, and have a lot less access to opportunity. Cities also mean that there's often a critical mass for many interests and minority groups. Are you LGBT? Are you a religious or racial minori…

It seems peculiar to me that there is no standard process for the winding down of city governance when population dwindles. It's probably just the human element. I don't mean to be promoting some sort of libertarian "self-governance is great!" philosophy, just thinking out loud. Imagine a city building game where city expenses increase with each population milestone (due to new positions in local government, new depa…

I'd love more info about these kinds of things, I find it quite fascinating to read about places going through it and watching parts of town locally dealing with it.

Also - pensions!

I feel we need more education for citizens about how public pensions and other retirement benefits work - as they can be a huge drain when the money is good, even more of a piece of the pie when the money goes down.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any rural tech communities?

#154

Post by DaltonCoffee »

engineer_22 wrote: post #139
mdasen wrote: post #48

> I've heard that people tend to be very different to those you find in a city In a lot of cases this is true - and it's not just about tech. Rural communities are often more religious, more conservative, lower income, lower educated, and have a lot less access to opportunity. Cities also mean that there's often a critical mass for many interests and minority groups. Are you LGBT? Are you a religious or racial minori…

>I'd argue you need to think about climate change and whether the US will continue to subsidize rural life. Not to fault you, but you're a seriously urban-centric thinker. Rural productivity is vital to urban concentration. Raw material does not come from the depths of the subway system, nor do the land and seaports magically produce goods. Food, fiber, fuel, etc come from the rural reaches. Flip this on it's head an…

Increasingly, many of these rural primary industries will need on site tech workers as well.

Rural Canada is where I'm located at the moment. I tend to agree with GP that cities are an inevitable migration towards efficiency and that rural life is increasingly an unsustainable welfare state.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any rural tech communities?

#155

Post by TulliusCicero »

engineer_22 wrote: post #139
mdasen wrote: post #48

> I've heard that people tend to be very different to those you find in a city In a lot of cases this is true - and it's not just about tech. Rural communities are often more religious, more conservative, lower income, lower educated, and have a lot less access to opportunity. Cities also mean that there's often a critical mass for many interests and minority groups. Are you LGBT? Are you a religious or racial minori…

>I'd argue you need to think about climate change and whether the US will continue to subsidize rural life. Not to fault you, but you're a seriously urban-centric thinker. Rural productivity is vital to urban concentration. Raw material does not come from the depths of the subway system, nor do the land and seaports magically produce goods. Food, fiber, fuel, etc come from the rural reaches. Flip this on it's head an…

It's important to understanding how just wrong the thinking behind this comment is.

"Everyone needs X" does NOT mean that it's impossible for X to be subsidized, or for "the place that produces X" to be subsidized.

> Flip this on it's head and we see that rural communities are providing a huge subsidy to urban communities in the form of labor and commodities.

That's not how economics works. That's not how any of this works.

If rural areas are getting a disproportionate amount of government spending, then they're (probably) getting subsidized. That they produce things that the urban dwellers need doesn't change that.

Just like if a big city gets a huge federal grant for a new subway system, that's probably a subsidy*, even if the big city produces things that people in rural areas use.

* Though you can argue that the question of whether something is a subsidy is really more about whether the area gets a certain amount of money in total, rather than claiming any form of federal/state spending is a subsidy automatically

Re: Ask HN: Are there any rural tech communities?

#156

Post by toast0 »

manacit wrote: post #82
toast0 wrote: post #23

Some of the Seattle 'suburbs' get fairly rural, lots of trees, at least some lots are a couple acres, a few working farms, lots of hobby farms, but still have a lot of tech workers. If remote work is important to you, check out internet options. There's a chance of Comcast and CenturyLink, but both get shifty about actually servicing homes in places (Comcast won't run a drop to my house even though their cable is on…

Very much agree with this, I know a number of people that commuted (pre-pandemic) to the East Side (Redmond/Bellevue) that live in North Bend, Monroe, Sultan, etc. These are all cities that are very much part of the 'Seattle area' and are not really considered rural, but would tick many of the boxes. If you want to go farther out, there are plenty of parts of WA that are really rural - but you might not find things l…

Yeah, the housing prices don't really lower until you're looking at a 90 minute commute. I feel like 'semi-rural' is an appropriate term for these places that aren't anywhere near as dense as suburbs, but also aren't mostly large lots of farm/forestry/wilderness/open space or even a patch of homes surrounded by that.

Re: Ask HN: Are there any rural tech communities?

#157

Post by [deleted] »

engineer_22 wrote: post #139
mdasen wrote: post #48

> I've heard that people tend to be very different to those you find in a city In a lot of cases this is true - and it's not just about tech. Rural communities are often more religious, more conservative, lower income, lower educated, and have a lot less access to opportunity. Cities also mean that there's often a critical mass for many interests and minority groups. Are you LGBT? Are you a religious or racial minori…

>I'd argue you need to think about climate change and whether the US will continue to subsidize rural life. Not to fault you, but you're a seriously urban-centric thinker. Rural productivity is vital to urban concentration. Raw material does not come from the depths of the subway system, nor do the land and seaports magically produce goods. Food, fiber, fuel, etc come from the rural reaches. Flip this on it's head an…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Are there any rural tech communities?

#158

Post by akuchling »

hunterb123 wrote: post #116
Clubber wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something else to consider, you want to be within 30 or so miles from a grocery store and a hospital. I would suggest looking for land outside a medium city.

Small towns have grocery stores and hospitals... My small town has a Walmart supercenter and another grocery store Rural is generally farm land outside of small towns, that's where people drive to get groceries. Land outside a medium city is a suburb, not rural.

Rural hospitals are going bankrupt and closing.

https://www.statnews.com/2019/02/21/lawmakers-act-prevent-ru...

"21 percent of rural hospitals nationwide are currently at high risk of imminent closure. It’s more than double that in states like Alabama, Mississippi, and Alaska, where upward of half of all rural hospitals are at high risk of closing. Overall, this adds up to about 430 hospitals in 43 states that collectively provide care for millions of Americans and employ more than 150,000 people."

Re: Ask HN: Are there any rural tech communities?

#159

Post by dogmatism »

niblettc wrote: post #58

Huntsville, AL, & Chattanooga, TN both have tech communities. Huntsville has NASA's MSFC and Redstone arsenal, so there's a ton of tech talent from all over the country there. Companies like Boeing, Blue Origin, Lockheed all have a presence. They're now starting to see non government / defense tech companies spring up, Like CommentSold. Gener8tor is launching a new accelerator program there.

Came here to say this. Neither are rural for sure, but you don't have to far outside the city to be rural. Limestone/Morgan county has fair number of tech people

If you really want to go rural, Scottsboro Electric offers gig internet, and you can join a snake-handling church too if that's your thing

Re: Ask HN: Are there any rural tech communities?

#160

Post by TulliusCicero »

mdasen wrote: post #83
julianlam wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems peculiar to me that there is no standard process for the winding down of city governance when population dwindles. It's probably just the human element. I don't mean to be promoting some sort of libertarian "self-governance is great!" philosophy, just thinking out loud. Imagine a city building game where city expenses increase with each population milestone (due to new positions in local government, new depa…

You can wind down certain things, but at what point are you winding down stuff that's more on the necessity side of things? The US has a lot of crumbling infrastructure that needs repair and replacement and I don't think people want to be told "sorry, your house is only accessible by off-road vehicle now." We're spending over $20B to increase rural broadband because people in rural areas don't want to be told "sorry,…

> The US has a lot of crumbling infrastructure that needs repair and replacement and I don't think people want to be told "sorry, your house is only accessible by off-road vehicle now."

This is probably necessary in some respects. The US has an enormous number of lane-miles per inhabitant. There's a lot of subsidizing going on here that doesn't necessarily look like subsidizing, because the way the road network operates is just ingrained into our culture.

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