can't wait for satellite to some day be robust and cheap enough to utterly destroy the notion of municipal internet. probably not in my lifetime, but hey, my 4g is cheap enough for my current uses :)
Not going to happen. Satellite ISPs are crippled by a couple of largely insurmountable technical limitations:
1. Latency. 600-700 ms RTT is typical on satellite, and it's bounded by the speed of light. This makes a lot of real-time services, like voice chat and video games, essentially unusable.
2. Bandwidth. The satellites you're communicating with have a limited capacity, and provisioning more capacity is nontrivial. As a result, most satellite services have very low data caps, typically 10 - 100 GB/month.
3. Physical concerns. Satellite connectivity requires an antenna with a clear view of the equatorial sky (e.g. south for northern hemisphere). This is often unavailable in cities, apartments, or hilly areas -- if there's a tall building or a mountain between you and the satellite, you can't use their service.
The next generation of satellite Internet is not going to be based on satellites in geostationary orbit. They are close to the surface of the Earth and form a mesh that can make paths that are shorter than the great circle distance.
This should fix all three of your problems, except maybe total bandwidth.
> form a mesh that can make paths that are shorter than the great circle distance
I think that's a slight mis-wording - you can't beat the great circle distance over the surface unless you go underground, but you can definitely beat a packet-switched, zig-zagging network running through the ground with a more or less direct point-to-point mesh running 100km above it.
I always wonder about the latency with satellite internet. A friend tried HughesNet one time. I tried to tell him, "I hope you don't care about online gaming..." Sure enough, the link had good bandwidth, but horrid latency. A TCP connection would take >2 seconds to establish.
GPS for example works just fine in the rain. Geostationary orbits have much larger issues with weather than the closer orbits of next gen satilite Internet.
You wouldn't notice when your GPS goes out off and on while in inclement weather. It's a service that can degrade gracefully. Some systems revert to other sensors when you lose GPS signal (tunnels, underground, etc). However, you would certainly notice when your packets drop and your video/audio streaming cuts out.
Bad weather alone does not stop GPS. Other issues can, but in cases of unobstructed views of the sky and solid equipment it’s not an issue.
Most streaming services can also degrade gracefully. Granted, we don’t have actual hardware to examine for these internet services, but many satellite uplinks already work fine in bad weather with at worst some loss of bandwidth.
Direct TV is using a geostationary orbit which as I said has many issues. That’s made worse by using a tiny dish, but even then it’s still much better the closer to the equator you are. The difference between Mane and key west is huge.
What you are describing is precisely the same situation I had when I lived in an apartment building next to a long-term tenant.
She simply didn't give a shit about the noise and trash she generated and all of us had to deal with it. The landlord didn't care either.
The police told me to deal with the landlord, because the noise wasn't at 3AM and wasn't "an event" like a concert. But her music was loud enough to shake my walls such that pictures fell off of them.
The town never returned phone calls. I simply vacated the apartment and told the landlord he would be more than welcome to sue me in court for the remainder of the lease.
Strangely, he never did, but I have a feeling that I would have had a hard time defending myself in court.
Though it is an unpopular opinion, I now feel that single family homes might be peferable to apartment buildings, if the caveat is that "the town and police will not do anything about anti-social behavior" as it is so rightfully called in the UK.
We actually limited the % of units that could be rented out in our association as well for the same reason (we actually allowed exceptions based on need (have to move fast and can't sell and so forth), and actually approved those 100% of the time, it just rarely came up).
Long term rentals can have problem tenants too, but long term rental owners at least had way more leverage over their rentals than short term (who really in our case didn't give a damn).
I think one of the differences is that long term rentals can establish a pattern of bad behavior by the tenant, a short term rental may constantly be in a terrible state but no one renter has committed enough repeated offenses to warrant a citation. The correct answer here (and with a lot of modern society) is that sub-contracting is not an out, the owner of the property has ultimate control over who rents from them and can put in the time and effort to vet people even if they're just staying for the weekend, it's just viewed as an unreasonable cost so people ignore it.
And it is entirely because the powers that be have rigged the market so that they can charge whatever they want.
How have they accomplished this? First, they set strict quotas on who can be a doctor. Then, they set strict quotas on who can offer what medical goods and products. Then, they strap everyone up with student and business debt.
I'm not saying it is the correct way or not, but there's a reason that in other countries you can buy over the counter things that you can't in the USA.
There is something more direct. When Bush signed the prescription drug add on for Medicare, it was made illegal for Medicare to negotiate rates - even though the VA can.
Not only can they charge what they want, it's also almost impossible to compare prices or find out what something costs in advance. With no competition, medical providers may charge what they wish.
A doctor can charge you $300 for your yearly visit. If you’re healthy he comes in the room for about 5 minutes, asks you a question or two and looks in your ears and says “see you next year”.
They still charge you if you don’t show up and will even asses a fee if you don’t cancel with enough notice.
Every functional society regulates who can be a doctor and who can produce medical goods and services, that really isn’t a problem. It can probably be helpful to try and look for differences between countries as opposed to just going for a libertarian end-run. Problems with the US system are an out-of-control pricing structure due to fragmentation of bargaining power, insane patenting laws which allow evergreening strategies, ideological opposition to functional and prove reforms, and good old fashioned cronyism.
The need to regulate the healthcare space is unavoidable, but simply bending over in the name of a free market that isn’t free is quite avoidable. The nature of for example, pharmaceuticals as a natural monopoly is acknowledged and confronted in those countries which offer OTC or generic options where the US doesn’t. The need for a strong bargaining position to negotiate pricing has been consistently undermined in the US.
> It can probably be helpful to try and look for differences between countries as opposed to just going for a libertarian end-run. Problems with the US system are an out-of-control pricing structure due to fragmentation of bargaining power, insane patenting laws which allow evergreening strategies, ideological opposition to functional and prove reforms, and good old fashioned cronyism.
It’s funny what “differences” people choose to fixate on. For example, patent systems are very similar between the US and Europe. And I doubt you can quantify any difference in “cronyism.” Supply of medical professionals, and doctor salaries, are quite different. So to are limits on what the state will pay for end-of-life and terminal care. (For example, when you see stories about people reaching their lifetime limit on insurance in the US, go check if the UK NHS’s death panels would have allowed anywhere near those expenses under their QALY calculations.)
I’d also love to hear your theory for how pharmaceuticals are a “natural monopoly.” EU countries lower drug prices through good old monopsony (single buyer), which has similar detrimental effects to a monopoly (single seller). They just get away with it because the US continues to resist such efforts.
In the USA, not meeting minimum deposit requirements, having a bad credit history or trackrecord with banks, not paying monthly fees, and not knowing how to use a computer can all preclude someone from being able to qualify or use a bank account.
I've personally seen friends struggle with all of the above, but the reloadable AMEX cards at Walmart seem to be doing well to fill in the gaps (except for not being able to direct deposit into them)
I'm not sure about the AMEX reloadable cards, but the Visa/Mastercard ones allow folks to have direct deposit. IIRC, they tend to waive the monthly fee if you do so.
Additionally, I know many employers in Indiana offered prepaid cards to their employees that did not have bank accounts. It has been 5 or 6 years since I lived there, mind you. These had fees involved as well, but it was better than nothing.
hey nice!!! I really appreciate that info. Definitely a game changer then. I know a guy who was going to checks cashed, every week, paying those fees, cash under the mattress etc etc etc. If only he know Bluebird was around the corner! He eventually got approved at Ally
It really gets my goat that some banks even charge monthly fees. Having a checking and savings account should be free. Withdrawing from and depositing to the account should be free. Writing checks and using a debit card should be free.
I am not a fan of overdraft fees, but I can see that they're at least justifiable.
Please don't patronize banks that have these fees.
Highly agreed my friend. I have never ever been charged a single fee for anything by my credit union. I've been there for 10 years now. Aside from the money they make loaning out my deposits there, I don't think they've ever made a cent off me. They have a direct deposit from my employer, but they pay me 1% APY monthly and I am sure they're losing money on me in that regard,
I agree, but what I think I mean is, whatever theyre making on my direct deposit (probably $10 a month in fees to my employer) is less than the 0.83% of xx,xxx in my checking :)
I would surely love 2% on my checking though! I thought 2% was on cash back, I will need to search for 2% checking with no restrictions somewhere
I think I see where you're going about the fees from your business. I agree, there's really not a lot of income directly generated, but a checking/savings account doesn't generate a lot of costs either. My understanding is it your credit union originates and services loans, that can be a pretty significant interest generator.
My credit union will give you 2% in checking if you meet all of these:
10 debit or credit card purchases per month
enroll in and maintain eStatements, eNotices, eTax & eCoupons for your accounts and loans
$300 minimum monthly ACH credit transaction or $5000 in deposit or loan balances
Previously, they required 10 debit card transactions per month, and I'm not sure I've made that many in my life. I'm going to check a bit closer on this, thanks. Credit union is StarOne.
Regardless of whether you believe Youtube FB and Twitter "should be allowed" to remove such videos from their platform, the reality is that some percentage of people will continue to use their computers to host and view these videos.
Whether that is on the clear web or dark web is debatable, but it would be impossible to fully censor any file 100% of the time.
And if it isn't on the internet, it'll be on the sneakernet.
EDIT: I wasn't arguing if it should be removed or not. I was stating my prediction about what I think will happen.
"Regardless of whether asteroids should be allowed to strike the Earth, they will continue to do so"
That argument doesn't work - people will speed, others will get murdered, emails will get leaked, measles will spread, yet we try to limit those all too.
As someone who routinely had to hide from truant officers during high school, I turned out completely fine. My grades were bad at first, but shockingly, once I was allowed to sleep in until 10AM because my first 4 classes of the day were "study hall", I had straight As.
Ironically now I am self-employed because I refuse to compromise my schedule for anyone.
There are multiple contradictory studies from Harvard about eggs.
As a result, there are youtubers who believe that cholesterol is a benficial steroid-like substance for muscle growth (Snake Diet guy), and others who feel tha it causes heart disease and death (Vegans such as durianrider)
The interesting thing is that both men seem to be qualitatively and quantitatively healthy, both on blood tests and physical performances
I keep reading things about how whether you see statistically significant results from a study can depend on things like whether you group subpopulations together...
My conclusion is that no matter how much lip service people give to the saying "correlation is not causation", they don't live it, because the only practical thing to do is publish whenever you find a correlation, or else you will perish.
> The interesting thing is that both men seem to be qualitatively and quantitatively healthy, both on blood tests and physical performances.
I don't find this particularly interesting. There are far too many other potential factors in an individual's health. Studies tell us about populations, not individuals.
