Actually, local governments offered tax abatements to the ISP to entice them to wire their cities and townships.

Local level lobbying also plays a big role.

My neighborhood is split between 2 cities: About 70% is in the first city and the other 30% is on the other. I live in the "other city". My neighborhood was originally wired by the cable company serving the "other city", Year later, another cable company comes along. The first city get completely wired - including its side of my neighborhood. The incremental cost to include my side of of the neighborhood would have been small at the time as all the needed crew, equipment and supplies were in the neighborhood. But the "other city" utilities board [1] caved to the original cable company's demand to not let the new company in - not even the quarter square mile section of my neighborhood that is in the "other city". Yes, everyone in my section of the neighborhood wrote both the utilities board and the city counsel asking that the new company be allowed to wire our part of the neighborhood. But we were just "a few dozen households" vs a huge corporate enterprise. (At the time, the new company had no plans involving other areas on the borders of the "other city", so the other residents didn't care.)

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[1] Utilities board because they have control over the installation and use of the "utility poles" that carry power, phone and cable TV lines. In theory, the city counsel could have overruled, but that would have been unlikely even if the incumbent cable company wasn't also lobbying them.

I recall at least one case where the police called it "illegal wiretapping", charging the person with the camera under wiretap laws.

Since my father's great-grandparents came from northern Europe, I think this might be the case (I am significantly taller than average).

There are social aspects to natural selection. In highschool and university, my female classmates (especially the tall ones) preferred taller males. Being significantly taller than average gave me a significant advantage in courting and retaining my girlfriend - despite me being a nerd.

How many of these protocols support adequate security?

Unfortunately, simply not supporting unsecure devices is likely to severely limit the market for a "secure IoT Hub". Manufacturers know this, so are very likely to to make "communicate with any device" the default setting..

The biggest problem I have seen with these connected devices is that many of them need to "call the mothership". While that does make it easier for the device vendors to support their products, it also means that could be used to determine when you are least likely to be home is being sent over the Internet.

I have 3, separate, wired networks in my house. One is for the home automation system, and has NO connection to the Internet.

The system does have IR receivers, so could be vulnerable to a phone or tablet app that sends IR signals using something like an IRED, so the IR receivers accept a very limited set of commands. BUT, the IR communications are one-way: Simple commands in, nothing out.

I've never resigned from a job, though been laid off twice. Once because the company went out of business and the other because the CFO (chief finance officer) panicked when one of the major customers had not issued an RFQ (request for quote) on an expected huge project. He persuaded the CEO to order a 35% reduction in staff. Because I was in the "hand off to manufacturing" phase of the project I was working one, I was one of "unlucky" people. Anyway, we were given 2 months notice and had full access until turning in our badges in on our last day (was after 8pm by the time I was finished and turned mine in). My tasks during the last 2 months were what I would have been doing anyway - finalizing project documentation and providing support to manufacturing engineers. When the bad news came, the VP of Engineering personally apologized to each of us, then on our last day, he hosted a "good bye" lunch and personally thanked each of us for all of great work. Months later, some of us, including me, received bonus checks as thank you for our work.

FWIW, a month after the bonus checks were sent, the customer finally issued the RFQ. But, I was not available to return to that company. (The return offer was not enough to justify resigning my new job, but was enough to "inspire" my new employer to raise my pay.)

AOL and similar services, like CompuServe, were founded while the Internet was still restricted to "non-commercial entities". They were giant, nation-wide bulletin board systems. They worked and were profitable. At the time they connected to the Internet, it was seen as a way to increase profit. But then came "big content". The major ISPs now perceive that forcing the major content providers to directly pay for access will increase their profits even more.

Will this really work? I don't know. But it will have the side effect of squeezing out the little content providers. The little ones will be dependent on the tolerance of the big ones to get their content seen.

Maybe

The "disk-only" code is still writing to memory. If anything is proven, it's that the OS is doing its memory management better than the Java or Python run time environments.

Would be interesting to add another case to compare: Open an unnamed pipe, write to "write end" of the pipe in the loop, then read the final string from the "read end" of the pipe.

That assumes the blade is sharp enough and travels correctly and swiftly down the track.

Nitrous Oxide (N2O) is also a general anesthetic. Is easy to manufacture. Xenon is a rare element.

As for plain nitrogen, I know, personally 2 people who almost died from hypoxia while using a rebreather while scuba diving. They were not checking their oxygen supply often enough and, in both cases, the low supply warning did not function. They simply lost consciousness. Fortunately, their dive partners noticed and were able to connect spare oxygen bottles in time.

CO2 plus water forms an acid. That is way holding your breath becomes painful after some length of time.

A painless option would be to use a continuous nitrogen purge. Then the condemned runs out of oxygen without a build up of CO2.This is something that anyone who nearly died while using a rebreather device can confirm. If you don't check your oxygen supply often enough and the low supply warning fails, you don't feel the pain associated with CO2 because the rebreather is "scrubbing" the CO2 out of the air you exhale. And because the system is recycling the nitrogen, you also don't get the implicit warning from having to "suck air" when your air tank pressure gets low.

With the proper equipment, I'm sure the data can be recovered. Still best to thoroughly destroy the drive.