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Comment by pyrale | Hacker News Reader

> When you choose an eccentric lifestyle

Many "eccentric" lifestyles are not chosen.

For instance not owning a smartphone or not having access to power easily is not necessarily limited to well-off tech-savv hipsters who want to make a statement, homeless people, older people in less connected areas or people in developing countries can also be in that situation.

When you make your services depend on specific access, and you give people without it no escape hatch, your service becoming successful usually means worsening access for people that have fewer means to adapt.

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Homeless people get free smartphones and free service in the US. Living in very rural areas is in fact a lifestyle choice. Not all choices need to be subsidized.

> Not all choices need to be subsidized.

Interesting choice of vocabulary.

You could decide not to serve people without also describing them as freeloaders in order to feel morally righteous about your choice.

People choosing to live in rural areas aren't freeloaders. Until they demand the rest of us subsidize them. The demand for subsidies is what makes a freeloader, not the lifestyle choice.

>Until they demand the rest of us subsidize them.

I think the discussion is less around "subsidizing" them and more why requiring a cellphone with 2FA to exist and do basic things is kinda stupid.

My original message was simply here to remind people that technical decisions we make have consequences on who can use our services.

You were the one introducing this vocabulary (as well as claiming everyone living there does it by choice). Now you try to move the debate again with people "demanding" stuff. None of this vocabulary or framing exists in the original article, or in mine.

Let me clarify the question: why do you insist on framing this debate in a way that makes a moral claim about people's character?

We should support the rural lifestyle choice. For one, the food you eat comes from there.

Food doesn't come from remote mountainous areas. Farm fields may not have cell service but living way out there isn't required even for farmers. I grew up on a farm so it's funny when people on the internet try to educate me about farms as if I've never heard of them.

>Food doesn't come from remote mountainous areas.

I must be imagining the farms that I pass in the mountains in the middle of nowhere when I go backpacking. Surely your argument isn't, "My farm was here, so it's impossible for other farms to be in different locales"?

Surely you aren't arguing "I once saw a farm in the mountains, therefore small remote mountain farms are critical to our food supply"?

The large trucks being loaded with crops for delivery elsewhere should suggest that it contributes to the greater food supply, yes. Further...

>I once...

My phrasing did not suggest "one time" (the phrase was "I pass", suggesting regularity), and it's not just one single farm, it's a few, and I've passed them many times. I have to agree with someone else[1] about your using vocabulary that others haven't introduced - I question whether or not a good faith discussion can be had because of that. Have a good one!

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43985331

It's rich for you to complain about me "using vocabulary" when your previous comment was trying to put words in my mouth that I did not say...

We should still be supportive of people who want to live in the mountains. I'd like to think that we as a society enable people to live how they want to live. Given that technology has allowed us to deploy broadband internet access pretty much anywhere, there is no good reason to deny them of e.g. web-based banking just because of some stupid SMS confirmation. Hardware 2FA keys are cryptographically superior AND usable by people in the mountains.

Exactly! Why should I subsidize sewers in town?

> Homeless people get free smartphones and free service in the US

Recently former homeless person here. The Republicans in Congress refused to renew the Lifeline program in 2023 and the replacement is objectively worse in every single way.

> Not all choices need to be subsidized.

Ah yes, being homeless, a choice. I hope it never happens to you.

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It just saddens me that you can be so devoid of empathy.

This kind of performative "empathy" people talk about in online forums is not true empathy. It's frequently the case that prioritizing this fake "empathy" results in bad outcomes. It saddens me when people use "empathy" to justify policy with strongly negative overall consequences. It's how you end up with, for example, the disaster zone that large chunks of San Francisco were before Lurie started cleaning up a few months ago. Or the deplorable state of our healthcare system.

You're bringing in all sorts of unrelated things here. The simple reality is that expecting a 70-year old to leave their entire life behind and move to the city just because of a relatively simple issue like this, is deeply and profoundly unemphatic. As is the general principle of not accepting that some people may want to choose a slightly different life from what you might choose for yourself. No one is asking the world here. These are small accommodations at best.

Nobody's asking them to leave their life behind! Talk about bringing in unrelated things! I'm saying we should recognize that lifestyle choices have consequences and that's OK. Not every consequence needs mitigation by third parties. Having to use a TOTP app and/or make a 20 minute trip into town to use some web services is not an unacceptable price to pay for the lifestyle choice of living in a remote area, and we shouldn't be vilifying people or branding them "devoid of empathy" for not prioritizing support for that use case over other, higher impact things they could do to improve their products.

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