Have they? Is Roku dominant in this market?

I might switch to a flip phone if it had gps and maps.

That’s simply the killer app for smart phones, at this point it’s a necessary part of my life. Without it I need a separate device just for that, and that device is actually less useful.

Edit: now that I’m reading other responses I have to agree, secure messaging and 2fa are really important too.

I could live without everything else, but to be honest, I don’t use much else. A few games, Lemmy, music apps, audiobook apps. Of those, Lemmy is the app most likely to leave me feeling upset, or like I want to doomscroll.

I think limiting the apps I use is the biggest thing I can do to not make the phone a negative influence for me. But to be clear, if that starts happening, Lemmy is the first to go, I already don’t use any other social media.

Hmm, any relation to John Goodenough?

He’s the materials scientist that made lithium ion battery chemistry actually work, thus making all of our modern mobile devices and electric vehicles actually possible.

I’m about to be seeing a lot less Roku…

They know they’re entirely replaceable right? Like the Amazon fire tv, apple tv, Chromecast… Making their platform shittier really shouldn’t be their top priority if they want to stay in business.

Fucking American airlines… They would do that…

In all fairness, that is one of the strong use cases for computers in general. Doing simple yet tedious tasks accurately. When looking over 50 names checking for a particular letter, humans get bored and make mistakes. We actually aren’t great at that sort of task. I think simply calling this ineptitude both misses the point and under appreciates the reality of being human.

Alas, it is easier to call someone dumb than to try to understand them.

Yeah, I have to agree. When a breach occurs (and it happens to just about every organization at some point or another) a press release this honest, responsible and immediate is not really the norm. I see this as a show of competence on the security front and integrity for the company as a whole.

I do wish Plex wasn’t further enshitifying their product more with every release, but that’s a different issue.

Read the article. Comprehend the article.

how they solve their food shortage

Oh hey, they could actually solve an additional problem at the same time! Just send all their extra kids to hunt all their invasive species. Lionfish are tasty and I’ll bet bermese python taste like chicken. Sure, not every kid is going to survive the hunt, but now there’s more food for everyone! And remember, killing two birds with one stone (so to speak).

I think I’m going to have a harder time fitting a threadripper in my 10 inch rack than I am getting any GPU in there.

Well, you could always use a closed loop CPU cooler. (Not necessarily that one)

With the radiator hanging out in back, this shouldn’t need much height.

Honestly, if Australia could roll out a national fiber backbone (almost a decade ago!) across the same approximate landmass as the contiguous 48 states at less than 10% of the overall population; there is no valid reason that the wealthiest nation to have ever existed can’t also do so.

Did Australia lay a national backbone as you said, or did they connect individual neighborhoods, or individual homes? Because all three of those are very different situations with very different costs associated.

I mean the US has had a national fiber backbone since 1995, but that doesn’t really mean anything about fiber to the home. I’m not sure rolling out a fiber backbone 10 years ago is really anything to brag about. However, extending the backbone to connect neighborhoods would be extremely helpful in lowering the costs to get fiber to the home, if that’s what they did in Australia, then that would indeed be laudable. If at the national level, they payed for fiber rollout to every home or every street… Well that would surprise me, but that would also be awesome!

So yeah, what did they do?

Office apps looked like that in 1998 because it was an interface that worked. It never should have changed.

Well you’re absolutely right then, sorry for the confusion.

Nationalized fiber networks or locally managed municipal fiber has always been a winning proposition. I’ve heard so many success stories about those rollouts and the only opposition to them has come from big ISPs who are scared they’ll be replaced (because they should be). Unfortunately, that’s a really strong opposition… Those ISPs have so much money and so much power, they’re managing to shift legislation, pass laws that make municipal fiber systems illegal (for the benefit of the consumers of course).

That’s what the subsidies are for.

Yeah I’m not in favor of that, not again. The US has provided funding to ISPs to be used explicitly in expanding rural broadband access, we’ve done it on multiple occasions. Every time ISPs simply pocket the money and do nothing.

Fool me once, twice, three times…

So hey, if the US wants to have the FCC do it themselves, just hire crews to lay fiber, then sure. It’ll be inefficient and expensive, but it would at least get done. But I’m not in favor of giving a dime to the existing ISPs…

Some people live in places that aren’t connected to large electrical grids, they have local generation and micro grids for a small community. Isolated mountains or small islands, or deserts are good examples of these situations. So if connecting to the electrical grid wasn’t realistic I’m willing to bet that a fiber connection also isn’t realistic.

It’s hard to believe you think fiber can work for literally everything. I really don’t know why you’re bothering to dig in on this issue, it’s so easy to prove otherwise. I hadn’t even mentioned the use case of vehicles yet, boats, planes, trains, trucks, campers, obviously you can’t run fiber to a vehicle. Or truly remote locations where people don’t live, but researches work there, Antarctic bases, etc.

Also, I think you misunderstood my last line. I’m saying Starlink isn’t right for most people. I’m just not making things up to say that.

While it is possible for objects in orbit to be knocked into a higher orbit, it’s certainly not common. It basically requires a collision with another object in a highly elliptical orbit, this is not a kind of orbit we use very often.

Also, these low orbit constellations are simply nowhere near the majority of satellites, up in geostationary orbit. It’s not realistic to imagine any debris from LEO ever reaching GSO, the distance between is just too vast. In general, Kessler syndrome would only extend downward from higher orbit, extending up to a higher orbit would be extremely unlikely.

Also, while astronauts could die, we keep enough emergency escape vehicles docked for the entire iss crew. NASA is full of smart people and they’re generally risk adverse these days, I don’t think anyone would die, but it would certainly be a shame to evacuate the iss.

Plus, the EU and China are understandably worried about Musk being the only game up there and want to deploy their own equivalent systems. So now there’s not just one system of satellites threatening Kessler syndrome, but possibly three.

This is in fact a worrying situation. Not because I think Kesler syndrome is a realistic concern, but because there’s only so much space in low earth orbit. I really don’t like one company having a monopoly on low orbit communications, but having layers and layers of satellite constellations also seems like a dangerous situation.

Just roll out fiber everywhere like we have with electricity.

I’m all for that in theory, but whenever we dedicate funds to that cause… telecoms just walk away with it. If the US isn’t interested in holding them accountable, I don’t really see any reason to throw more money their way. That said, Starlink is doing fine, I see no reason to throw money at them either.

It’s crazy to say it doesn’t work well in tandem… I mean, it’s demonstrable, If it didn’t work, people wouldn’t use it, but they do. And there is no other way to reach users in some places. Starlink can reach users that only a long range wireless solution can work for. There are some other long range wireless solutions, but this one does work.

Look, I don’t like Elon, I don’t like monopolies, I’m not a secret shill for SpaceX, but I can admit the truth right in front of me. You don’t have to stretch the truth to say Starlink isn’t a good system for the vast majority of people, so why do it? Why create a false narrative? Why get all defensive about a technology?

And finally, I do not see any reason to care about an extra 5 ms latency.

Well the companies that want to lay fiber aren’t always the same ones who own the telephone poles. If they have to pay for that, that adds to costs.

Also, above ground cables are more exposed and need to be repaired more frequently. Falling trees can sever cables and simply swinging in the wind puts more wear on the cables over time. All together, it means that burying cables is more cost effective in the long term, but present higher upfront costs. Whereas above ground cables are cheaper upfront, but more expensive over time.

The high upfront costs are the bigger deal, but in general, they just don’t want to lay a mile of cable for a couple of users, regardless of how they’re doing it.

I mean, it’s not definitely a bad thing in principle… But given the current administration, I would worry about any company the government wants to get their hands into. I’d be worried if the us suddenly wanted to buy into Coca-Cola… But Intel is scarier.

Yeah, this is the point I was getting at, encrypted content tends to be personalized to individual users, not always I guess. But yeah, I’m not sure how much is left.