cvet's comments

Cynicism like this only leads to self imposed amorality. It makes stagnation a self fulfilling prophecy.

You're basically making a bandwagon argument that humans historically have abused power, so this frees anyone in tech from any obligation to try to not abuse power. This is an absurd argument because it precludes progress.

There's a fair criticism of bleeding heart syndrome in the article. It's not the job of "tech" to solve every problem. But this doesn't mean we should just say "fuck it" when confronted with moral ambiguity because millions of people died in the Congo. The only way things improve is by large numbers of people speaking out. Power has no inherent motive to change, people need to push. And if pushing veers into silliness sometimes, who cares.

Good points—the only thing I'd say is that we're talking about a really capital intensive industry where the incumbent may be able to drop prices to compete with a newcomer. Example: If company B comes to a town where company A is already operating, company A can just offer new subscribers the same terms as B, making it hard for B to compete. If B can anticipate A's action (not that hard in this case, because I can do it after a couple of beers) then B may choose not to invest because B's road to a profit requires producing at a lower marginal cost than A and undercutting A's prices. They actually have to pull subscribers away from A. If A is already producing at a low marginal cost but overcharging, then A has the flexibility to fight a price war (and potentially win).

Ha maybe I'm banking too much on those competent government officials. The variance in quality is certainly high.

I love the ideal, but the reality is that a lot of people are getting a half-assed effort from one company that has no economic incentive to improve. Even the threat of governments coming in can provide some of that incentive to make service better. Add to this that the cities that have created their own broadband networks have done it extremely well, and it's hard to make abstract private/public arguments.

In Chattanooga, TN: Public: 1 gigabit, $70 a month; Comcast: 25 mbps, $45 a month (I just looked it up for a zip code in the city)

25 mbps / 1 gbps = 0.025

Assuming linear scaling: 1gbps at Comcast would cost $1800/mo. Holy shit.

This is exactly what economic theory predicts will happen in the absence of competition. What's often ignored is the efficacy of the government getting stuff done is largely dependent on the competency of the officials. But if you have good officials, the government solution to the high speed problem is a fantastic one.

"unfair competition" is all you really need to hear to understand that these companies hate the free market. so do the politicians that make laws to secure oligopolies.

the doublethink on this issue is amazing: the telecom companies are providing crappy internet, so let's make a law preventing competition, which is the nominal foundation of our economic system.

As a student in a Ph.D. program, I can't help but think I'm caught in the grant-driven world and am being steered away from deeper consideration of big ideas. It's an easy track to get stuck on, mostly because grant-proposing is a game, identifying a minor unexplored area is relatively simple, and there are short-term rewards for doing so.

What's really getting at me is the arrogance of established "experts." It's kind of baffling (because it should be about curiosity, not certainty), and when you come across someone who has made it through the academic system and still retained curiosity, independent-mindedness, etc., it's a really refreshing sight.

That being said, a lot of what I do is unfulfilling and I've discussed several times leaving the academic world for some kind of tech startup life, although I'm not sure if that is a pipe dream or grounded in reality.

That data is aggregated. You have everyone from a CEO to a college student with no financial support from her parents on there. It doesn't show who's buying which phone, nor does it show the shift from "feature phones" to smartphones. The trendsetters were (are?) buying iPhones, which has always been a premium device which Apple wants to make substantial profits on. Samsung competes on price,

This is a really interesting bit of speculation. Obama's consistently "just off" statements (i.e. saying an executive order that hadn't been implemented yet would have protected Snowden) make me think that Obama & his advisers doesn't have a good handle on what the NSA is doing and how the law applies to the "secret state." One could say that "Obama is lying," which may be perfectly true, but it could also be that the politicians are genuinely uninformed and/or think protections exist that don't.

I could see this being the case because politicians train to talk about health care and the economy, while the details of NSA programs are rarely discussed and so politicians have little incentive to be up on the facts.

I'm in a well regarded sociology department and there's a huge gap between the sociologists who take technical things seriously (programming, stats) and those who don't. People have actually rolled their eyes in classes when we read papers about simulations. I was lucky: we have a core group of students who program and gather data using modern tools, but I gather this is rare both within my discipline and without.