Believe it or not, there actually was an effort to block electric lighting. Because it was someone’s job to walk around the neighborhoods and light all of the streetlights. And “protect the jobs” has historically been a really awful argument against technology.
I mean, when have those who lost their jobs due to technological obsolescence actually been looked after directly, rather than left to fend for themselves?
Sure, but did those jobs go to those who lost theirs? And as others have pointed out, not always and forever. Just logically speaking a lot of automation at best will "free" people to pursue other things, and so could boost creativity and innovation... But people need freedom and financial security for that to be possible.
In short, I'm shilling for UBI, guaranteed minimum income and other socialist programmed to spread the value gain from technology back into the community.
An economist visits a site where a canal is being dug. He asks the foreman why the workers are digging with shovels, when a diesel-powered excavator could do the work of a hundred men. The foreman explains that the canal is a jobs project.
The economist exclaims, "Why didn't you say that it was a jobs project earlier?! These men should be digging with spoons!"
In my brother's neighborhood, more than half the houses have gas fueled porch lights. They burn 24/7, because no one wants to remember to turn the gas on/off with the sun or to light them every night. These are homes built in the last 40 years: the gas lights were a 'quaint' fad.
...OK but I used to work in a neighborhood where a bunch of people had actual, period exterior gaslights left over from the 19th century. They had been upgraded with digital timers and stuff. Automatic shut-off/restart. That's ridiculous!
Major telecommunication companies collected billions of dollars through state rate increases and tax breaks since the 1990s under the promise of building high-speed fiber-optic networks, but largely failed to deliver the fully realized infrastructure.
So we pay, nothing happened, and now out of fairness, deal with it?
I think they got like 100 billion or more, might have been several hundreds, in the Obama years, never delivered. Then a later administration, I think Biden's, gave them another such deal.
Infrastructure is important, and walking back from these gigabit targets is awful. There is no replacement for fiber. We all deserve to have access to fast internet.
But to yell at a cloud for a moment, if we're being honest most people should not need gigabit. I know everyone is a gamer now, but let's forget about bulk downloads. For normal browsing most people should not need much more than about 12mbps. 12 mbps is fast enough to have two 1080p h265 streams running concurrently. And yet, when you try to use the modern web at that speed, it's a terrible experience because of all the adtech bullshit that gets crammed into every page. When I measured this Ars article it was 6.53MB. That is, to borrow a yardstick from a blogpost I reread recently, long enough to fit 3 or 4 of the great Russian epics inside. It is bigger than the shareware version of DOOM, big enough to fit the entire python standard package library documentation. For one article.
Don't let this cheapen the FCC being chickenshit and captured by specific perverse corporate interests, but publishers have sold us a bridge when it comes to the modern web. Web3 was supposed to fix all this with micropayments. I'd gladly pay whatever my paltry share of Ars' CPM they expected to get out of my pageview, wouldn't you? But cryptobros turned it into a get-rich-quick slopfest and then it died.
edit: having meandered over to my computer because I just cannot sleep, I decided to measure the page as I access it, with ublock, noscript, and umatrix turned on. That article now weighs just over 724kB. Way better. Reader mode loses the images and gets the article down to 2.49kB. Meaning the actual content is roughly 0.04% of the delivered size of the original page. The stylesheet alone is many times the size of the content. I know I'm really indulging my old man energy but web pages do not need to be this large. I know cache exists, and that's fine, but it's still a bit ridiculous. Some people in this world do still use dialup and/or pay per MB. Your 6.5MB web page might cost somebody a nontrivial sum to read, relative to their means.
The irony is not lost on me that my home instance itself is not the most lightweight web app. The page I am using to edit this comment is 1.9MB. With the cache active it's <100kB transferred per page load but still, if I weren't a hypocrite I'd probably switch to a Piefed instance.
Most people hardly need internet at all, but that doesnt mean the option shouldnt be available. Working in IT, ive had architects in remote areas attempting to download revit files (sometimes many gigabytes in size) over a T1 connection (maximum 1.5mb/s). We convinced them to swap to a 4g connection after much back and forth.
Our internet needs are going up more and more over time, especially in the age of "vibe code and ship it". There are gonna be massive webpages, high quality video, and large downloads more often. 1gbps isn't that crazy of a goal to hit when my co-ax cable is putting out ~300 mbps.
Personally, just working from home, i have several instances where i need to download gigabyte+ files on company time, sometimes multiple times a day, but fiber isnt available yet. Add on my wife streaming something, guests phone connections, throttling, or just wifi interference and suddenly my 300mbps becomes something like 150 mbps or less, making an hour process 2 hours. Make it 5g and cloudy and now im fired for wasting company time.
The reality is that we're a big nation, and big nations are expensive and have insane needs. 1gbps can be achieved over coax fairly easily with enough infrastructure, but ISPs haaaatttteeee spending money when they can just collect a check instead
I get your point but also that's a bias borne from the industrial and technological revolutions, it's entirely possible that we may already are seeing the slow down of large scale technological advances from every 2-4 years seeing major leaps to every ten years or more, hell I cant think of any major tech jumps over the last 10 years of particular note outside of AI (hurk) and battery/ green energy neither of which need faster internet.
He was wrong then, and you're wrong that nobody needs gigabit. Stop handwringing for big corporations. This isn't a difficult thing to do, it just makes companies slightly less money. America has some of the most expensive internet in the world, and some of the worst per mb.
At present, it is impossible to predict long-term technological developments and the evolution of consumer preferences.
Ah yes, it is impossible to know whether a consumer will still want faster Internet in the future. They could enjoy the retro experience of a dial up modem making noises when connecting.
There is still ISDN in the US and it's still there to uphold artificial scarcity and price fixing. Broadband in the US is basically neutered to ensure that the ISPs can buy cheaper equipment and maintain high pricing.
It's also why they wanted to remove network neutrality, so they also could gouge small data centres and make backroom deals with big tech giants.
I know you may hate the word "data centre", but if the small ones can't compete, say goodbye to any form of competition.
Yeah, my daughter was complaining about data centers, and I pointed out she meant AI hypserscaler data centers, and that I work in a data center, a small old fashioned one that just runs internet and TV for people.
As soon as I hear "FCC" I ignore it as it's nothing more than the old "money/power/control" triumvirate that currently exists within and amongst the trump regime. The people still have the real power. Look at how ABC now has some spine after the people bit hard into their collective subscription coin-gathering process.
2: All providers don’t have to upgrade all of their infrastructure and can sell a 50Mbps link as fast. Backhaul can be much smaller and they can over-sell 50Mbps to a lot more people in a neighborhood than 1000Mbps.
3: All that core backhaul can be reserved for flock camera cellular feeds and AI datacenter traffic without having to spend on further upgrades.
A general regression, brought to you by the Regressive party.
I doubt it, major shift with most carriers to get rid of old switching gear. New gear isn’t being made, old gear is expensive to maintain, and FFC has been changing a lot of rules around the service. Its now, near impossible to get new POTS traditional services anymore. Today it’s mostly POTS in a box; 5G wireless to a ATA device, with battery backup for survivability.
It will, ther just isn’t much call for it. I used to be in manged services and for some clients analog backup was a requirement, but you typically want those using a POTS line because they are less susceptible to power and network outages. FoIP is a thing, FAX shares the same basic principles, and there are protocols and codecs specifically tailored to provide better FAX transmission reliability.
Look up PCM, It’s pretty interesting if your into that sort of thing, and there is plenty of room to chase the rabbit.
My dad got grumpy when I told him I used an app to do my laundry instead of a sack of quarters. Then he got real grumpy when I explained it was better in every. single. way.
This is that, in policy form. (EDIT: This is the important part, not how I do my laundry)
The downside to the app, is 40 or 50 companies and several government agencies now know how much you spend, how much laundry you do, what cycles you chose, what laundromat and what time, and many other downstream metrics, inferred or otherwise.
While it might not be apparent when our seemingly unimportant information ends up in the hands of data brokers, it is actually very damaging.
Information is power, and silicon valley and the data brokers have too much of it. Don't surrender your information if you can help it, there is a reason the world went to shit, and complete informational awareness of our rulers is a very big part of that.
The main disadvantage that I see is the quarter-laundry machines were pretty easy to modify so that you didn't need to pay them. The whole app thing appears to be a lot more difficult to hack, the coin machines can be disabled with a screwdriver.
I do not miss broken laundry rooms. They never stopped at disabling the quarter machine, lets get them quarters that are in there! "Oops, we bent the frame and the door doesn't close until someone comes to fix it." Good times. These good guy hackers you remember running around dispensing free gas and blowing up ATMs never existed.
BTW, there's still a quarter machine for people that want it.
These good guy hackers you remember running around dispensing free gas and blowing up ATMs never existed.
My building mysteriously had the wonky coin payment system bypassed after the landlord began to truly embrace his inner pos and stopped fixing them. I feel the other tenants enjoyed the benefits of having the only functional pair of machines in the complex at the low, low cost of press the button more than I did.
SHOCKING!!!!111 Worst person you know made a good point
The modern web fucking sucks. Imagine there's no gigabit in the country where most sites are [made|tested|dictated]. Lots of things can be made to make sites suck harder even then, it can't keep going forever this way. It will hit some sort of wall eventually.
(offtopic but I love how "politics at lemmy dot world" isn't world politics)
I'm not entirely upset at this. It seems like any advances in computing and network speed these days are used as an excuse to collect more data and make software more inefficient. Also from a global warming perspective, if you're into that, it may be time we start looking at things from a sufficiency standpoint rather than efficiency.
From a global warming perspective, I'm pretty sure fiber is actually the best because it requires less power than any sort of radio, particularly satellite (starlink or whatever). For wired alternatives, you have copper which is a very useful and expensive metal, which would be put to better use elsewhere. It's great for transmitting electricity and heat, just not as great for data.
Fiber optics are as close to magic as we can get in data transmission. There are very few downsides.
Plus the data will be collected anyway. The guys running all the services you connect to have their own fiber. AWS and the like roll out their own intercontinental fiber even. The only question is whether American citizens would be entitled to high quality Internet service that they already paid for over 20 years ago or whether it's time to forget all that and settle for less.
89 Comments
chunk6235@piefed.social · 144 pts · 3d
"Government abandons attempt to electrify lighting, says it's unfair to flammable technologies"
Carl@anarchist.nexus · 56 pts · 3d
Believe it or not, there actually was an effort to block electric lighting. Because it was someone’s job to walk around the neighborhoods and light all of the streetlights. And “protect the jobs” has historically been a really awful argument against technology.
ynthrepic@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 3d
Has the argument been awful, or just the outcome?
I mean, when have those who lost their jobs due to technological obsolescence actually been looked after directly, rather than left to fend for themselves?
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2d
Historically speaking, new technologies tend to create more new jobs than they destroy.
MajinBlayze@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
There was a time that that statement applied to horses as well
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
Won't anybody think of the blacksmiths and stable boys!
MajinBlayze@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
TIL horses worked as blacksmiths and stable boys
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
There are many heart breaking accounts from those days where horses were driven to prostitution and other desperate measures to make ends meet.
ynthrepic@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
Sure, but did those jobs go to those who lost theirs? And as others have pointed out, not always and forever. Just logically speaking a lot of automation at best will "free" people to pursue other things, and so could boost creativity and innovation... But people need freedom and financial security for that to be possible.
In short, I'm shilling for UBI, guaranteed minimum income and other socialist programmed to spread the value gain from technology back into the community.
GraniteM@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2d
An economist visits a site where a canal is being dug. He asks the foreman why the workers are digging with shovels, when a diesel-powered excavator could do the work of a hundred men. The foreman explains that the canal is a jobs project.
The economist exclaims, "Why didn't you say that it was a jobs project earlier?! These men should be digging with spoons!"
nodiratime@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 3d
That was pretty cool job, though.
cantstopthesignal@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 2d
tburkhol@slrpnk.net · 10 pts · 2d
In my brother's neighborhood, more than half the houses have gas fueled porch lights. They burn 24/7, because no one wants to remember to turn the gas on/off with the sun or to light them every night. These are homes built in the last 40 years: the gas lights were a 'quaint' fad.
chunk6235@piefed.social · 10 pts · 2d
Jfc.... That's mental, how long have they had those?
I'd never be able to use that, I'd be too worried some shithead would manage to shatter the housing and start a fire
kestrel7_7@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2d
...OK but I used to work in a neighborhood where a bunch of people had actual, period exterior gaslights left over from the 19th century. They had been upgraded with digital timers and stuff. Automatic shut-off/restart. That's ridiculous!
Schmoo@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 2d
Alarm clocks are unfair to window knockers.
Zeppo@sh.itjust.works · 105 pts · 3d
Sounds like Elron got involved and started whining
BeanGoblin@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 100 pts · 3d
"We are eliminating the automotive safety standards because they are unfair to the dangerous cars"
actual clown logic
Mister_Feeny@fedia.io · 26 pts · 3d
Yeah, that's pretty much exactly what they did.
techcrunch.com/2025/04/10/nhtsas-self-driving-safety-staff-reportedly-disproportionally-affected-by-doge-cuts/
FinalRemix@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 3d
Well? What do you think DOGE did, in addition to grabbing up everyones' data?
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2d
"Welcome to clown world! Please check your brain at the door and put on your white makeup!"
Rujo@lemmy.world · 70 pts · 2d
Major telecommunication companies collected billions of dollars through state rate increases and tax breaks since the 1990s under the promise of building high-speed fiber-optic networks, but largely failed to deliver the fully realized infrastructure.
So we pay, nothing happened, and now out of fairness, deal with it?
Brilliant!
bedwyr@piefed.ca · 19 pts · 2d
I think they got like 100 billion or more, might have been several hundreds, in the Obama years, never delivered. Then a later administration, I think Biden's, gave them another such deal.
AHemlocksLie@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 2d
Probably just a bribe to buy access for projects like PRISM.
postmateDumbass@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
That surveilance data doesnt transport itself after all.
TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com · 62 pts · 3d
so much for a government of the people, by the people, and for the people
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 2d
When was that ever the case?
TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com · 2 pts · 2d
Yeah if you were white, owned property, and had a penis. Otherwise, no that was never the case.
AmyAye@nord.pub · 1 pts · 2d
Are they really pwoplw of they are poor though?
/s
mcv@lemmy.zip · 42 pts · 2d
Technologies have more protection against discrimination than people?
CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml · 14 pts · 2d
They can't fire Mitch McConnell, it would be unfair to all the living senators.
criss_cross@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
Companies have more voting power apparently
agnomeunknown@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 2d
Corporations are people and dollars are speech 🙃
bitjunkie@lemmy.world · 40 pts · 2d
"Unfair" to telecoms who essentially stole billions from the American taxpayers and didn't build out what was promised
Malyca@lemmy.zip · 11 pts · 2d
Twice, in Verizon's case
aesthelete@lemmy.world · 38 pts · 2d
FCC too corrupt to function
NekoKoneko@lemmy.world · 31 pts · 3d
Slower technologies like Starlink. Yup.
certified_expert@lemmy.world · 29 pts · 2d
"Government clousures toilet factories, says it's unfair to diaper companies"
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2d
Dont give them such great ideas.
DisasterTransport@startrek.website · 29 pts · 2d
Infrastructure is important, and walking back from these gigabit targets is awful. There is no replacement for fiber. We all deserve to have access to fast internet.
But to yell at a cloud for a moment, if we're being honest most people should not need gigabit. I know everyone is a gamer now, but let's forget about bulk downloads. For normal browsing most people should not need much more than about 12mbps. 12 mbps is fast enough to have two 1080p h265 streams running concurrently. And yet, when you try to use the modern web at that speed, it's a terrible experience because of all the adtech bullshit that gets crammed into every page. When I measured this Ars article it was 6.53MB. That is, to borrow a yardstick from a blogpost I reread recently, long enough to fit 3 or 4 of the great Russian epics inside. It is bigger than the shareware version of DOOM, big enough to fit the entire python standard package library documentation. For one article.
Don't let this cheapen the FCC being chickenshit and captured by specific perverse corporate interests, but publishers have sold us a bridge when it comes to the modern web. Web3 was supposed to fix all this with micropayments. I'd gladly pay whatever my paltry share of Ars' CPM they expected to get out of my pageview, wouldn't you? But cryptobros turned it into a get-rich-quick slopfest and then it died.
edit: having meandered over to my computer because I just cannot sleep, I decided to measure the page as I access it, with ublock, noscript, and umatrix turned on. That article now weighs just over 724kB. Way better. Reader mode loses the images and gets the article down to 2.49kB. Meaning the actual content is roughly 0.04% of the delivered size of the original page. The stylesheet alone is many times the size of the content. I know I'm really indulging my old man energy but web pages do not need to be this large. I know cache exists, and that's fine, but it's still a bit ridiculous. Some people in this world do still use dialup and/or pay per MB. Your 6.5MB web page might cost somebody a nontrivial sum to read, relative to their means.
The irony is not lost on me that my home instance itself is not the most lightweight web app. The page I am using to edit this comment is 1.9MB. With the cache active it's <100kB transferred per page load but still, if I weren't a hypocrite I'd probably switch to a Piefed instance.
edit 2: added emphasis
Funkt4st1c@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 2d
Most people hardly need internet at all, but that doesnt mean the option shouldnt be available. Working in IT, ive had architects in remote areas attempting to download revit files (sometimes many gigabytes in size) over a T1 connection (maximum 1.5mb/s). We convinced them to swap to a 4g connection after much back and forth.
Our internet needs are going up more and more over time, especially in the age of "vibe code and ship it". There are gonna be massive webpages, high quality video, and large downloads more often. 1gbps isn't that crazy of a goal to hit when my co-ax cable is putting out ~300 mbps.
Personally, just working from home, i have several instances where i need to download gigabyte+ files on company time, sometimes multiple times a day, but fiber isnt available yet. Add on my wife streaming something, guests phone connections, throttling, or just wifi interference and suddenly my 300mbps becomes something like 150 mbps or less, making an hour process 2 hours. Make it 5g and cloudy and now im fired for wasting company time.
The reality is that we're a big nation, and big nations are expensive and have insane needs. 1gbps can be achieved over coax fairly easily with enough infrastructure, but ISPs haaaatttteeee spending money when they can just collect a check instead
architect@thelemmy.club · 7 pts · 2d
Yes but some of us DO need it for our small businesses to run.
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 7 pts · 2d
For now*
The way tech moves, this won’t be the case forever. And it’ll be better to have it already then need it and have to wait another decade for it.
vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 2d
I get your point but also that's a bias borne from the industrial and technological revolutions, it's entirely possible that we may already are seeing the slow down of large scale technological advances from every 2-4 years seeing major leaps to every ten years or more, hell I cant think of any major tech jumps over the last 10 years of particular note outside of AI (hurk) and battery/ green energy neither of which need faster internet.
AmyAye@nord.pub · 7 pts · 2d
I remeber in the 90s deciding if it was worth removing line breaks in order to make my html on Geocities take up kbs less.
ysjet@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2d
He was wrong then, and you're wrong that nobody needs gigabit. Stop handwringing for big corporations. This isn't a difficult thing to do, it just makes companies slightly less money. America has some of the most expensive internet in the world, and some of the worst per mb.
ThomasWilliams@lemmy.world · 27 pts · 3d
DEI tech.
kaotic@lemmy.world · 26 pts · 2d
That's the fucking point!
zbyte64@awful.systems · 26 pts · 2d
Ah yes, it is impossible to know whether a consumer will still want faster Internet in the future. They could enjoy the retro experience of a dial up modem making noises when connecting.
M0oP0o@mander.xyz · 7 pts · 2d
Or maybe the internet will be locked up by new terrible laws and high speeds are not needed for the allowed content.
stumu415@lemmy.zip · 19 pts · 2d
Soon the US will be manufacturing external 28.8 kbps modems with a SCSI interface using steam powered tools.
PlantDadManGuy@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 2d
Excuse me I prefer my pixels, packets, and kilobits delivered by horse drawn carriage thank you.
NekoKoneko@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
Sorry, all our steam is being used to build aircraft carrier catapults.
AnitaAmandaHuginskis@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 2d
So that's why vaccinations are dialed back, right? It's unfair to diseases?
jfc, you really do get the government you deserve, lol /s
Rubanski@discuss.tchncs.de · 0 pts · 2d
They are just dialed up now Edit: it was a joke about slow internet, seems it was a bit of a convoluted joke :/
thorhop@sopuli.xyz · 13 pts · 3d
There is still ISDN in the US and it's still there to uphold artificial scarcity and price fixing. Broadband in the US is basically neutered to ensure that the ISPs can buy cheaper equipment and maintain high pricing.
It's also why they wanted to remove network neutrality, so they also could gouge small data centres and make backroom deals with big tech giants.
I know you may hate the word "data centre", but if the small ones can't compete, say goodbye to any form of competition.
cosmos8188@leminal.space · 3 pts · 2d
The word data centre is primarily a problem if its used in the context of AI.
AmyAye@nord.pub · 2 pts · 2d
Yeah, my daughter was complaining about data centers, and I pointed out she meant AI hypserscaler data centers, and that I work in a data center, a small old fashioned one that just runs internet and TV for people.
mp3@lemmy.ca · 11 pts · 2d
It's no longer the land of opportunity, it's the land of mediocrity.
Zink@programming.dev · 11 pts · 2d
They will literally make arguments for affirmative action and reparations as long as the beneficiary is a rich corporation instead of a human in need.
MehBlah@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 2d
Those poor cable companies with their outdated tech.
Retro_unlimited@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 2d
So we now go back to dialup?
ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one · 3 pts · 2d
I want my computer to screech at me when it connects to the internet.
agnomeunknown@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 2d
They were trying to warn us of the horrors that awaited
tanisnikana@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 3d
Turtles are great and all, but dammit I want my pipes fast.
Foofighter@discuss.tchncs.de · 7 pts · 3d
Ah yes. In Germany we call this "Technologieoffenheit" and do not consider internet speeds, but car's.
danekrae@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 3d
So they're in favor of net neutrality?!
Etterra@discuss.online · 5 pts · 2d
Thanks Elon.
PacketPilgrim@thelemmy.club · 3 pts · 2d
Xfinity must have got to them.
BenevolentOne@infosec.pub · 3 pts · 2d
Do roads next.
Septimaeus@infosec.pub · 3 pts · 2d
Today’s abolitionists aren’t nearly as cool.
melsaskca@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 2d
As soon as I hear "FCC" I ignore it as it's nothing more than the old "money/power/control" triumvirate that currently exists within and amongst the trump regime. The people still have the real power. Look at how ABC now has some spine after the people bit hard into their collective subscription coin-gathering process.
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
Did they get paid by a POTS modem maker? Is someone trying to resurrect US Robotics?
ryper@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 2d
Nah, this is for Musk and Bezos because their satellites can't get anywhere near gigabit.
SalmonTractor@discuss.tchncs.de · 6 pts · 2d
1: Starlink
2: All providers don’t have to upgrade all of their infrastructure and can sell a 50Mbps link as fast. Backhaul can be much smaller and they can over-sell 50Mbps to a lot more people in a neighborhood than 1000Mbps.
3: All that core backhaul can be reserved for flock camera cellular feeds and AI datacenter traffic without having to spend on further upgrades.
A general regression, brought to you by the Regressive party.
Rujo@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
I doubt it, major shift with most carriers to get rid of old switching gear. New gear isn’t being made, old gear is expensive to maintain, and FFC has been changing a lot of rules around the service. Its now, near impossible to get new POTS traditional services anymore. Today it’s mostly POTS in a box; 5G wireless to a ATA device, with battery backup for survivability.
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
I've always wondered if an old modem would work through VOIP. But it might rely on some frequencies that aren't encoded.
Rujo@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2d
It will, ther just isn’t much call for it. I used to be in manged services and for some clients analog backup was a requirement, but you typically want those using a POTS line because they are less susceptible to power and network outages. FoIP is a thing, FAX shares the same basic principles, and there are protocols and codecs specifically tailored to provide better FAX transmission reliability.
Look up PCM, It’s pretty interesting if your into that sort of thing, and there is plenty of room to chase the rabbit.
ripcord@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 2d
Read the article...?
Eh_I@lemmy.world · -5 pts · 2d
My dad got grumpy when I told him I used an app to do my laundry instead of a sack of quarters. Then he got real grumpy when I explained it was better in every. single. way.
This is that, in policy form. (EDIT: This is the important part, not how I do my laundry)
SalmonTractor@discuss.tchncs.de · 8 pts · 2d
The downside to the app, is 40 or 50 companies and several government agencies now know how much you spend, how much laundry you do, what cycles you chose, what laundromat and what time, and many other downstream metrics, inferred or otherwise.
Quarters don’t snitch.
Eh_I@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 2d
If Tide wants to know when I do my laundry and the settings I use for the trade-off, fine. I accepted that, literally a button I pressed said ACCEPT.
But eleven quarters per load? Fuck me.
I'd buy that T-shirt
bedwyr@piefed.ca · 4 pts · 2d
While it might not be apparent when our seemingly unimportant information ends up in the hands of data brokers, it is actually very damaging.
Information is power, and silicon valley and the data brokers have too much of it. Don't surrender your information if you can help it, there is a reason the world went to shit, and complete informational awareness of our rulers is a very big part of that.
kestrel7_7@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 2d
The main disadvantage that I see is the quarter-laundry machines were pretty easy to modify so that you didn't need to pay them. The whole app thing appears to be a lot more difficult to hack, the coin machines can be disabled with a screwdriver.
Eh_I@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 2d
I do not miss broken laundry rooms. They never stopped at disabling the quarter machine, lets get them quarters that are in there! "Oops, we bent the frame and the door doesn't close until someone comes to fix it." Good times. These good guy hackers you remember running around dispensing free gas and blowing up ATMs never existed.
BTW, there's still a quarter machine for people that want it.
revelrous@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 2d
My building mysteriously had the wonky coin payment system bypassed after the landlord began to truly embrace his inner pos and stopped fixing them. I feel the other tenants enjoyed the benefits of having the only functional pair of machines in the complex at the low, low cost of press the button more than I did.
diaphragmwp@discuss.tchncs.de · -6 pts · 2d
Hot take:
SHOCKING!!!!111 Worst person you know made a good point
The modern web fucking sucks. Imagine there's no gigabit in the country where most sites are [made|tested|dictated]. Lots of things can be made to make sites suck harder even then, it can't keep going forever this way. It will hit some sort of wall eventually.
(offtopic but I love how "politics at lemmy dot world" isn't world politics)
custom_username@reddthat.com · -6 pts · 2d
I'm not entirely upset at this. It seems like any advances in computing and network speed these days are used as an excuse to collect more data and make software more inefficient. Also from a global warming perspective, if you're into that, it may be time we start looking at things from a sufficiency standpoint rather than efficiency.
boonhet@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 2d
From a global warming perspective, I'm pretty sure fiber is actually the best because it requires less power than any sort of radio, particularly satellite (starlink or whatever). For wired alternatives, you have copper which is a very useful and expensive metal, which would be put to better use elsewhere. It's great for transmitting electricity and heat, just not as great for data.
Fiber optics are as close to magic as we can get in data transmission. There are very few downsides.
Plus the data will be collected anyway. The guys running all the services you connect to have their own fiber. AWS and the like roll out their own intercontinental fiber even. The only question is whether American citizens would be entitled to high quality Internet service that they already paid for over 20 years ago or whether it's time to forget all that and settle for less.