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Comment by bubblethink | Hacker News Reader

To be the devil's advocate, the previous admin also squandered a lot of broadband money away in a pattern that seems common to all Democratic infra projects. See https://reason.com/2024/06/27/why-has-joe-bidens-42-billion-... . Neither party is good at this. The FCC broadband map and the b/w labels (previous admin) are nice though.

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Saying they squandered the money makes it sound like they spent it and got no results. In fact it has not been spent. They were just slow to work out the details for how states could apply and in processing those applications. They got through that and several states had their applications approved and were just waiting for the money to actually start building.

The new administration stopped that and rescinded all the approvals, made various changes to the program (which will result in many areas that would have gotten high speed broadband that would be sufficient for decades getting slower broadband that will be obsolete much sooner), and now everyone has to reapply again.

Kind of bizarre to point to an article that takes a quote from a Republican FCC commissioner at its face value when these people like as easily as you breathe.

Infrastructure projects take time and the project was coming along just fine within its timeline. It's not a coincidence that several red states were the furthest along in the process - https://broadbandnow.com/research/bead-grants. The "delays" in the process were because it prioritized needs rather than grant political favors. Ironically the new rules will set these states back and harm them. It's a recurring pattern.

Why do you feel the need to be the devils advocate? What do you get from defending this crap?

> I think “logic lord” types are sometimes drawn to contrarian positions because they like the strong emotional reactions that stating those positions induces in other people. It gives them a smug sense that they are dispassionate and logical and everyone else is blinded by emotion.

I had saved it from some other social media type. It accurately describes a lot of HN community.

>I think “logic lord” types are sometimes drawn to contrarian positions because they like the strong emotional reactions that stating those positions induces in other people.

Isn't that a pretty much the definition of an internet troll[0]? I don't disagree, but let's call a spade a spade, okay?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(slang)

i think what a lot of people experience is frustration around group-think along the lines of "I stubbed my toe, it's someone-i-dont-like's fault". Because thinking that many of the problems with ____ group is unique to that group means that people are going to continue to miss the fact that the people they do support are also guilty of the same thing

Playing devil's advocate allows you to improve your own argument and develop strong rebuttals to the other speaker's thesis.

> Why do you feel the need to be the devils advocate? What do you get from defending this crap?

To prevent this level of monopolar partisanship.

Is this action a net-negative for ISP subscribers (i.e. everyone)? Yes.

However, this doesn't give any leeway at all in ignoring the past failures of the other side when it comes to this space either. The only (legally advisable) path left is vocal advocacy for its restoration. Doesn't matter who it is, only that this goal is to be achieved.

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Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

Why do you feel the impulse to reply to a question that was not addressed to you?

its an online discussion, the point is to discuss things, these aren't PMs, the nature of online discussion is anyone can jump in anywhere. i dont understand why you have a hostile tone towards this very normal and acceptable situation

I think it’s important to point out that the two US parties are almost identical, but I wouldn’t call it “devil’s advocate”. It’s not defending one party to point out both are bad for workers.

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