Hacker homes: Would you couchsurf Kansas City just to get Google Fiber? | Hacker News Reader

Hacker homes: Would you couchsurf Kansas City just to get Google Fiber?

arstechnica.com

21 pointsiProject13 comments

A few friends and I have been talking about renting a house in KC. We'd just come in whenever we want to go focus on hacking and take advantage of the awesome connection and low cost of living.

What kind of projects do 'hack' on?

I do a lot of reversing and security analysis; from web apps to game protocols to electronic locks. So it'd be nice to have a place set up with all my gear and just go focus on breaking product X.

I've recently gotten a 500/500 fiber connection (I'm located in the Netherlands) and it's been fun, but I haven't found a way/service to saturate it yet. It's fast enough that I don't think about the speed but 100/100 would probably be able to provide that as well.

An internal network with just fiber subscribers would be cool though, I seem to remember old DirectConnect networks that would only allow university connections with big links.

I would consider moving to Kansas City and renting my own place just to get Google Fiber. Moving into someone else's house or something without rent would be awesome.

Too bad I am not really young anymore.. I' 34, which I guess is probably considered way over the hill.

This may be a dumb question, but is there anywhere else in the US where you can buy a broadband service with similar capabilities?

eh, if people are really interested, and in santa clara on the municipal fiber loop, you can setup your apartment for really not all that much more than the cost of moving; getting from the street to the building is on the order of ten kilobucks, and it wouldn't take very many apartment complexes to amortize out the monthly costs to almost nothing. (we're talking $100-$200 per fiber mile per month) - then once you get into a data center, bandwidth, especially download bandwidth (datacenters use mostly upload) is dang cheap.

(of course, then you have inside wiring costs, and I dono how much that is going to set you back)

http://svpfiber.com

If someone is seriously interested, let me know, I've done a bunch of research and have the map they give you under NDA around here somewhere.

If you really can't pay more than a hundred bucks a month, you also want to check out surewest in sacramento.

Chattanooga, TN has fiber available to individuals and businesses through their municipal electric company[1] (they put the fiber in for a Smart Grid). It is a cool little city, but there's not much of a tech sector. It is probably 1/3 the size of KC.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chattanooga#EPB.27s_gigabit_pub...

"'In three months, if we can get 10 startups onboard, then every 3 months we can get 10 more,'Barreth added."

How does that work?

"In exchange, the 'hacker-entrepreneur' is expected to buy their own food, build a startup in town, and 'pay this kindness forward.'"

Sounds like after 3 months, the now-established startup is expected to host a new startup.

Not exactly. You can check out the details at www.homesForHackers.com. It's more of a good faith 'pay it forward' effort to the community, somehow.

How about having a part time service where you accept mailed in HD's and upload their contents.

Edit: assuming you can do that under the UA

To compete with Amazon S3?

I would for the right team :D

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