Hacker News Reader

Comment by xpe | Hacker News Reader

> AM is dead, and FM is nearly there as well.

Overstated and incorrect. (The author reveals their own bubble in the preceding paragraph.)

Word selection matters; there is not point in using "dead" when we have more accurate words like "declining".

Talk is cheap. If the parent commenter wants to make a prediction about if/when AM and/or FM will die, I recommend going to a prediction market and practice making testable predictions. Most people are poorly calibrated. Many people would benefit from seeing how poorly calibrated they are firsthand. Losing is a powerful motivator for course correction.

View on HN

We just had a news story where an active AM station had its tower stolen and no one noticed until the landscapers reported it was gone.

And what bubble did I reveal, because it could be that I’m able to afford cars that cost ~$30k, like used Teslas or a new Toyota Camry, it could be that I like technology (but that’s mostly a given here), did you mean I’m an early adopter? Stop discounting me and my opinion baselessly by placing me in a bubble you won’t even define. How am I to even discuss with you when you use weasel wording.

> We just had a news story where an active AM station had its tower stolen and no one noticed until the landscapers reported it was gone.

In your local area I presume…

> I’m able to afford cars that cost ~$30k, like used Teslas or a new Toyota Camry, it could be that I like technology (but that’s mostly a given here), did you mean I’m an early adopter

Yeah, exactly. You also mentioned you live in a city, which are pretty dense and don’t require much effort to spread emergency information in. Most people can’t afford new Camrys or teslas at all…

> Stop discounting me and my opinion baselessly by placing me in a bubble you won’t even define

No… and I did define it.

“ being successful in my 40s and living in a city with 2 teslas”

That is not a common situation… especially nowadays where something like 40% of American households would be in danger of a debt spiral when faced with any kind of unexpected $400 bill.

This is the bubble that I was referring to:

> My wife and I both have Teslas

Even if they are bought used at affordable prices, you have convenient access to electric charging, right? This often involves homeownership or relatively high quality housing rentals or employers with that capability. This is a small segment of the population, as I see it. Fair?

This?

https://apnews.com/article/radio-station-tower-stolen-am-fm-...

In context, your comment could easily be read as suggesting the radio tower was so unimportant that zero people noticed something amiss until a landscaping crew saw that it was physically missing.

If so, ok, that would be a pretty big waste of a radio tower. But did it really happen like your comment implies? No regular listeners tuned in and heard … static? Unlikely. Nobody scratched their head? Nobody who worked at the station got curious?

Here is what the article wrote:

> The theft was discovered Feb. 2, when a maintenance crew arrived in the wooded area where the tower once stood and found it gone.

This makes perfect sense because one does typically have to put eyes on the thing (or the lack of it) to conclusively prove that a theft occurred. I don’t think it would be possible to steal a radio tower while it was broadcasting. I don’t think it would be likely that the talk radio guy or DJ would say “sorry the transmission is about to be terminated because the tower is getting stolen.”

Or it was the middle of the night and the station wasn’t broadcasting. Anyhow. This is one of the sadder and more hilarious windows into what people will do for money. Where do you sell a stolen AM radio tower? How much is it worth?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com