Gigabit goal “prejudicial” to satellite and wireless
Ah, so money changed hands. Got it.
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“Government abandons attempt to electrify lighting, says it’s unfair to flammable technologies”
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.
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?
Historically speaking, new technologies tend to create more new jobs than they destroy.
There was a time that that statement applied to horses as well
Won’t anybody think of the blacksmiths and stable boys!
TIL horses worked as blacksmiths and stable boys
There are many heart breaking accounts from those days where horses were driven to prostitution and other desperate measures to make ends meet.
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!”
That was pretty cool job, though.
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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.
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
…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!
Alarm clocks are unfair to window knockers.
Sounds like Elron got involved and started whining
“We are eliminating the automotive safety standards because they are unfair to the dangerous cars”
actual clown logic
Yeah, that’s pretty much exactly what they did.
Well? What do you think DOGE did, in addition to grabbing up everyones’ data?
“Welcome to clown world! Please check your brain at the door and put on your white makeup!”
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!
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.
Probably just a bribe to buy access for projects like PRISM.
That surveilance data doesnt transport itself after all.
so much for a government of the people, by the people, and for the people
When was that ever the case?
Yeah if you were white, owned property, and had a penis. Otherwise, no that was never the case.
Are they really pwoplw of they are poor though?
/s
Technologies have more protection against discrimination than people?
They can’t fire Mitch McConnell, it would be unfair to all the living senators.
Companies have more voting power apparently
Corporations are people and dollars are speech 🙃
“Unfair” to telecoms who essentially stole billions from the American taxpayers and didn’t build out what was promised
Twice, in Verizon’s case
FCC too corrupt to function
Slower technologies like Starlink. Yup.
“Government clousures toilet factories, says it’s unfair to diaper companies”
Dont give them such great ideas.
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But to yell at a cloud for a moment, if we’re being honest most people should not need gigabit.
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.
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.
Yes but some of us DO need it for our small businesses to run.
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.
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
640K ought to be enough for anybody.
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.
Or maybe the internet will be locked up by new terrible laws and high speeds are not needed for the allowed content.
DEI tech.
That’s the fucking point!
Soon the US will be manufacturing external 28.8 kbps modems with a SCSI interface using steam powered tools.
Excuse me I prefer my pixels, packets, and kilobits delivered by horse drawn carriage thank you.
Sorry, all our steam is being used to build aircraft carrier catapults.
