Episode: 997
Title: HPR0997: Poorly Recorded Thoughts On Rural Computing
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0997/hpr0997.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 17:07:13

---

Hello, this is Lost in Bronx. It's been quite a while since I have uploaded
an episode for HPR. Sometime last year I'm not sure when. I'm not counting the
New Year's Eve special. I mean I was on that but everybody was on that that
doesn't really count as an episode I don't think. I am doing a series on HPR called
Theater of the Imagination which is kind of dedicated to the modern
audio drama movement and my exploration of it but that isn't what today is
just a very quick sort of examination, rumination if you would, about urban
versus rural computing. That is to say the overall experience of living an
online life or connected lifestyle, a computed lifestyle if you would in those
two environments and I've done both. You know I used to live in New York City. I
now live in a rural part of Arizona and I can tell you that the difference is
striking and the limitations are tremendous. By and large just a quick my quick
opinion by and large almost everything we read in tech media almost everything
we read in even in the Linux world or the free open source software world almost
all of that more or less reflects a more urban lifestyle and that's not to
say that everyone listening isn't you know or is part of a an urban lifestyle
that is to say they live in a big city somewhere that's not true I certainly
dull and many of the contributors to HPR don't but many do and the fact of the
matter is if you if you live in an urban environment and have lived there for
an extended period of time. Odds are you either forgotten or you don't even
know the kind of challenges that people that live in a rural environment have
sometimes simply trying to participate in the latest and greatest that might
be hitting the internet right we just recently within the last year so got
a landline to our property before that we were using a Verizon wireless
air card which was plugged into a router that all the computers in the house
sidened off now this was just awful it was absolutely painfully slow worse than
dial-up no lie worse than dial-up and absolutely unreliable the thing would be
down three four times a week no explanation and they charged up the ask for it
it was very expensive so eventually once we got a landline you know we dump that
immediately and we've been golden ever since or have we because while we have a
DSL line now it's on the low end of things so many of the things that I hear
people participate in or take for granted you know we don't necessarily have
that luxury there are some very strange elements to our connected this that we
have to deal with now you can say well if your bandwidth is limited you could
do you know there are alternatives there are things you could do you know in
addition to surfing you can get your media through torrenting or things like
that do you know what there's something weird about torrenting in that they you
know if you're if you're not going to be a leech you have to enable uploading so
that you can allow other people to grab bits of your file as you're going along
right so that works fine except for the fact that unless I have that slow to a
super crawl and I'm talking about less than you know a couple of kilobytes per
second or whatever the hell it is however they measure that unless I have it
really really really traveled badly my internet connection grinds to a halt now
I'm not saying we have a great upload capability we don't we have a shitty one
but if I enable that and it goes up to its max which might be 35 kilobytes
per second or whatever it is I mean it's really dreadful for some reason our
download capabilities just come to a screeching halt I'm not kidding right
suddenly no one's pages load suddenly you can't get a file you were in the
middle you were in the middle of downloading you can't even watch YouTube on
the lowest you know settings it's just it's awful so torrenting I have to
throttle it badly well I don't mind that honestly I don't really mind doing that
I don't mind you know how I wouldn't mind taking a burden for nothing and
giving nothing back I mean it does give me a slight quinge of conscience I
suppose so I give them a slight amount of upload and and we're all copicetic as
far as I'm concerned but that's just one example because my my internet
connection is very limited now the speed isn't great but the service is the
service tends to be very very solid it's from a local company called Frontier
out here and they do they do a pretty good job all things considered the thing
is it's the only game in town right satellite out here is really bad now I
I've heard you know the reason we didn't jump to satellite and dumping Verizon
wireless is that satellite service out here is even worse I hear it's really
sketchy you know a windy day and the thing goes down you know the cloud comes
out you can't connect it's just awful so you know I know it's not that way
everywhere but out here it's got a very bad reputation however because it is
rural that's what a lot of people are left with so we went with a slightly
different a slightly different direction that was you know pretty damn
painful in and of itself and very expensive but that's the past so currently
we're dealing with a low-end DSL line that is nonetheless reliable well I'll
tell you this reliability trumps speed or bandwidth or even data caps or anything
like that every single time the fact that I know I can turn it on and it's
going to be there that means more to me than almost any of it so why am I
complaining well I'm not not really I'm trying to put this into perspective not
just for you but for me one thing we can't do out here reliably is get a
decent cell phone signal half the time I live in the white mountains reaching
Arizona now if you don't know Arizona you might say mountains Arizona I thought it
was all desert well it is I live in an area that's known as the high desert that
is to say it's desert but it's in the mountains so we do get snow and we do get
winters and we do get all of that because we're up about 7,000 feet here in
elevation and the cell phone signals are not great and cell phone coverage despite
what you might see in a map so you can go right to you know Verizon's coverage
map that's crap that's nonsense don't believe that all right they're
coverage here is disgusting and the others are worse that's the thing so try to
get it you know you could pay for a nice data plan but you're never going to be
able to take advantage of it not out here and I suspect there are quite a few
places left in the world and certainly in the United States where that is
also true so what does that mean that means we are missing out on the entire
you know the entire movement of smartphones the entire movement of mobile
computing that is gone for us right it doesn't work because I you know I don't
have a connection that's good enough for that and it's too expensive anyway you
know because they're you know we just we simply can't afford it and a lot of
people here can't afford it and that means you know if you can't afford these
ridiculous data plants these you know some of them are really outrageous for
what they're offering you simply can't take part in it and if you can't take
part in it and that is the way tech is you know the direction tech is going and
has been going for some time now then you are behind the curve so that is
another reason why living in a rural area with poor coverage of wireless
data plans wireless you know cell phone sometimes just landlines if you live in
those area you are living in a third world country when it comes to computing
technology so what is the current state in America I don't know I don't have
those statistics I could look them up but you know I don't even know where and I
probably wouldn't understand them even if I did but I can tell you that it's
challenge and it's still a mighty challenge and much of what people take for
granted that I read in blog posts I read in articles that I read on the IRC I
read in forums much of the experience the people take for granted I'm telling
you it's not universal you know there are a lot of people out there that simply
have no concept of the idea of mobile computing I'm one of them and because of
that much of what people talk about even though you know I feel like I I
participate to an extent in these kinds of conversations if only to make
snarky commentary much of it just flies over my head because I have no
experience with it and I'm not likely to anytime soon so what does that tell us
I don't know I don't know it's just that when you are trying to maybe make a
point about modern computing just understand that if someone doesn't get what
you're talking about it might simply be because they've never experienced it
and maybe never will this has been lost in Bronx and I hope to get another
episode of theater of the imagination out within a couple of months but until
then this will have to suffice take care
you have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio does
aren't we are a community podcast network that releases shows every week day
Monday through Friday today's show like all our shows was contributed by a
HBR listener like yourself if you ever consider recording a podcast then visit
our website to find out how easy it really is Hacker Public Radio was founded
by the digital dog pound and the economical and computer club HBR is funded
by the binary revolution at binref.com all binref projects are crowd
sponsored by linear pages from shared hosting to custom private clouds go to
lunarpages.com for all your hosting needs unless otherwise stasis today's show
is released under a creative commons attribution share a line free those