geosoco @ geosoco @kbin.social

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393

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226

Joined

2 yr. ago

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I understand a lot more about this than you’re assuming.

I’ve seen this Linus video, plus I’ve seen projects like these work and have a good grasp on the cost. The Linus video can’t explain any of that, And he’s pretty clueless in general.

There’s a reason google and other companies use wireless and cell for this exact reason. Building ands maintenance is cheaper than satellites.

Your estimates assume totally new infrastructure, but that’s not the case for most rural communities. They have existing infrastructure that can be upgraded. You’re also wrongly assuming they’re going to put up towers across this distance. They would only put them where needed.

More importantly this is in comparison to satellites, which are even more expensive and this particular low orbit has a short lifespan.

It’s not a solution for the cabin in the top of Mount Everest or the middle of the ocean, but as i said in my original reply they are best for the vast majority of people.

There is a need for satellite communication comms, but we have it already today. I’m just not convinced this particular project is worth the cost.

Again most importantly, there’s not a ton of evidence that people living in remote areas want broadband.

I get your point, but I suspect there's more here than just lifespan. I don't think we know the reason but the article says this:

As a comparison, only 248 satellites had burned up at the start of this year, so the number destroyed during the last two months is higher than the figure for the first seven months of the year.

If 200 over the span of 2 months is "normal" then I have questions about the financial viability of the project.

First, no one is talking about standard home-grade routers, though there is technology to make those work at longer distances. We're talking about say a cellular network, which is considered broadband in most of the US and has an existing infrastructure. Many of these areas are already going to have cellular access, and upgrades to existing networks are significantly cheaper and easier to maintain. There are long-range wifi solutions, and those work too, but most require line-of-sight, so as i stated, aren't suited for say mountanous area.

Name one community that is stretched out over 1000k. That's not community, that's a fucking state or territory. Seriously, that's more than 10x the width or height of Rhode Island.

Again, as I said, it's questionable whether those people even want high-speed internet in the first place. You're probably not living remotely to be on-the-grid.

Governments generally fund the buildout for this, so it's rarely on citizens anyway.

The LMG video is irrelevant. Linus is far from an expert.

Terrestrial includes wireless solutions, which are better suited for many last-leg hookups in situations like these.

Sure, there's a lot of places where these won't work (eg. mountainous areas), but there are also questions about whether people living that remotely even want broadband or wireless.

I don't know what's been tried in a real retail market, but I remember Walmart or perhaps just designers trying all sorts of ideas from carts that scanned them to people using their phones. It starts to get really complicated when people want to remove things or you have multiple people putting stuff in carts (eg. children sneaking items in)

I'm sure it's solvable, it's just a question of whether it's worth the cost for shoppers and the stores.

There's another challenge that the self-checkout poses where people cover the UPCs with UPCs for cheaper items (either self printed, or by taking off stickers from cheaper items). Most of these RFID things are also stickers so that also becomes a problem.

This. Works for many, but there are some services that recognize it's a VoIP service and won't allow it (I think discord was one that won't work)

Another option is a burner phone, which are relatively cheap. You have to use them periodically or they'll disable and recycle the number, but you can typically find them for around 25$.

There's at least one additional issue, and I think it's something Walmart ran into when trying the RFID for checkout and it's the noisy radio environment which led to issues scanning all of the codes properly or including other people's items as one of your purchases if it's too close (eg. the self checkout counters being close by or shopping with a friend/partner who is behind you.)

Maybe it'll work this time?

Chrome lost its way years ago. I value not seeing ads or getting personalized content more than I value 99% of the chrome features.

Since Firefox finally fixed that weird memory fragmentation issue, it's been pretty smooth sailing for me. Inspector & Debugger could use a few performance patches though.

If there's one thing republicans hate, it's a fair election.

This sounds like it's in that same line of news as the republic election officials banning the use of private money to help maintain and protect aging election systems. There was an article the other day about Zuckerberg's non-profit donating a bunch of money in 2020 to help support and fund local election offices.

YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

Gotcha, yeah sorry about that I didn't check that link and just copied it.

Uh, they do link to it. I also link to it in the blurb. the "found here" text links to the google doc.

I've had some similar roles before, but more often than not companies just do it anyway, even if you have a lot of data to the contrary. It's stupidly easy for someone in management to push some of this through despite the data, choose an arbitrary metric to define their success, get their bonus, and then bail for another company. Meanwhile, folks left at the company have to then try and fix all of the nonsense. It blows that we value failing forward. I've seen a few decent products just tanked this way.

Would not be surprised if this were true.

A few highlights:

• He still faces felony charges
• "The deliberations were rife with potential conflicts of interest. Paxton’s career includes six terms in the Texas House and two years in the Senate, serving in the seat that his wife now holds, so he knows many of its members. One was caught up in the articles of impeachment: Sen. Bryan Hughes ( R), accused of helping Paxton exploit his office to aid Paul, who in turn hired a woman with whom Paxton was having an affair. The woman, Laura Olson, later worked for Sen. Donna Campbell ( R)."

Any specific area you're looking?

If you're looking for super broad. BBC's tech section is decent. There's also always slashdot.

If you're looking for like more PC/gaming stuff, anandtech, techpowerup, and wccftech generally seem decent. Tomshardware news is decent too, but the only reviews I'd trust there are Aris' power supply reviews and articles.

basically it just means it's using newer chip-making processes to make the chip smaller and faster. It's sort of a no-brainer that a new chip would use some updated processes and likely run faster than one made 7 or 8 years ago.

That's just misinformation. That'll never happen.

Yup. Some like DEC even offered on-the-fly binary recompilation from x86 to Alpha in windows, back when windows NT was available on 4 or 5 different processors (PowerPC, MIPS, Alpha, x86, and I think eventually Intel's original x86 64-bit replacement.

x86 has evolved so much in the last 40 years that it's still able to keep a foothold for PCs.

I'm curious what's about to happen moving forward as they continue to increase transistor densities and shrink die sizes.