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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

I've seen HOAs that are both full of petty bureaucrats with unresolved anger issues, and ones that are out to make the community as widely accommodating as possible. No way to know without actually going and talking to folks.

That said, any community with the ability to push out people unwilling to abide by the communities standards will have a higher satisfaction rating with members of the community. Whether it is by incarcerating people who violate laws (general practice in most US cities), disallowing member to said people (common in private clubs), or killing and torturing their families (seems to be a technique used in less civilized places).

Some friends of mine have speculated what a retirement home for hackers would look like. Basically catering to folks who have strong opinions about "how" to live their lives. It isn't an easy question to answer.

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> I've seen HOAs that are both full of petty bureaucrats with unresolved anger issues, and ones that are out to make the community as widely accommodating as possible. No way to know without actually going and talking to folks.

The real problem is that the association members could change overnight and there isn't really anything you can do to stop it.

The key element is a shared opinion about how other people 'should' behave. That's what makes golf courses a successful focal point for retirement communities in a way that say a shared interest in hunting probably can't.

You're right about a key element being a (broadly defined) set of common values. But hunting also includes a broadly defined set of common values: appreciation for the land and conservation, love of marksmanship, support for 2A rights, etc. Which is why, of course, hunting-based mostly-retirement communities like Brays Island exist:

http://www.braysisland.org/ "Recognized by enthusiasts as one of the premier locations for bird hunting in the southeast, Brays Island provides everything you need for a memorable and productive hunt. Of the island's 5,500 acres, 3,500 are untouched woods, marshes and fields set aside as nature preserves to guarantee your hunting enjoyment..."

"The Brays Island Gun Club is the premier site for the enjoyment of shooting sports. With the finest facilities for clay shooting, we offer numerous forms of target shooting, including skeet, trap, five-stand, plus a newly re-designed sporting clays course featuring a picturesque 15 stations..."

I'm not a hunter, but the inn looks quite pleasant. I'd go there for a visit if I were retired.

> support for 2A rights

Maybe that's true, but do you know this or are you speculating? I'm asking because I'm from Norway - a country with one of the highest percentages of gun ownership in the world - almost exclusively hunting rifles and shotguns -, yet where most people would be absolutely horrified if anyone tried to push through a "US style" liberalisation of gun laws. We have very strict gun laws, both in terms of licensing, what type of weapons are allowed, and storage.

Maybe hunting is much more tied to a specific sub-culture in the US than it is internationally, I guess.

>Maybe that's true, but do you know this or are you speculating?

I spent a few years covering 2A topics for CBS News.com (this is before I left to found Recent.io). This is true in my experience. As <brudgers> says, you can be interested in shooting sports without being interested in hunting, but I've found that both groups of people tend to be broadly pro-2A.

Note this may not have been true a generation or so ago. But since then, we've seen a ratchet effect where anti-gun politicians have tried to impose more and more restrictions. One effect has been to turn the NRA into the potent political force it is today. This coincided with the rise of the anti-gun left, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who in this clip seems to say she wanted to ban all guns (or all rifles?) but didn't have enough votes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rA6oX6eWWs Barack Obama, or his aide, filled out a questionnaire in 1996 saying he supported a state law banning the "manufacture, sale, and possession of handguns": http://www.politico.com/static/PPM41_obamaquestionaire1newes... http://www.politico.com/static/PPM41_obamaquestionaire2.html San Francisco tried to ban possession of all handguns: http://mccullagh.org/sf/handgun-ban/ And so on.

This has been done in the name of cracking down on gun crimes. But the same weapon that can drop a 250-lb deer can also drop a 180-lb man, and even casual gun owners have become politically active and aware in a way they were not a generation ago (when politicians on the left were not as anti-gun as they are today). Also some of the recent wave of anti-gun legislation sweeps in weapons used for hunting purposes, which helps to explain this support for 2A rights.

Gun Ownership as an expression of the Second Amendment culture in the US is different from hunting culture as you expect. There's an overlap of course, but there are distinct differences between people who primarily own guns as an end in itself and those who primarily own guns as a means of hunting. The NRA has developed political clout by appealing to both groups of gun owners.

It looks lovely, but it's just another development of million dollar homes in the South Carolina Low Country. 325 houses on 5500 acres is not at the same scale as The Villages or a Sun City...The original Sun City is some 25000 residents. Neghboring Sun City West is about the same. Even the run of the mill Sun City Texas is slated for a 7500 home build out.

Here's an ad for a gun-based community as imagined by Negativeland: Sycamore.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhaAOjy5ow4

I think it would be a retirement home for people that aren't hackers anymore. The idealized notion of a hacker is someone that is engaged with life and that sort of person, in my observation, doesn't end up in a retirement home.

On the contrary, the idealised hacker loves having someone else take care of the base needs, so they can keep working on their 'thing'. Nothing in a retirement village forces you off the computer or workbench, out of your home and onto the golf course. As long as what you're hacking does comply with keeping the place looking neat and tidy (most hacker hobbies aren't at odds with this), I don't see a conflict between the two.

Retirement home for hackers better include many gaming parties, hackathons, game jams, local tech conferences, ... Actually that sounds pretty awesome. How many years until there are enough retiring hackers for that to be possible.

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