Indeed, I'm mostly a libertarian and I view this as not really any different than a neighborhood, town, or city getting together and forming a cooperative. My reaction is 'good on them! Fie on established businesses that are failing to meet demands'.

Power vs Energy. ;)

He does actually point this out - his example was rather than needing 5 volunteers doing 1 hour shifts sequentially, they do it in parallel. Which raises the question of whether you HAVE 5 volunteers, or just 1 doing a 5 hour shift...

Still, one would have to ask how many bags a volunteer can carry - if he can carry 3 per trip, but ends up only carrying 1-2 much of the time, a caching system would be more efficient because he can just keep hauling 3 bags per trip rather than 1-2 if that's all the current customer is ordering.

I've never accused Walmart of efficiency, and McDonald's did it's motion efficiency studies decades and decades ago, and hasn't kept up the work.

Okay, in my experience with the military every time there was a major disaster somewhere in the world I had to tell my command that I was safe and that I didn't have any immediate family in the affected area. They eventually mostly automated this with a website I could use.

So, at least theoretically facebook could dispense with the graphics and ads and send minimal amounts of data, even stuff like 'respond to this text with your status to auto-update', using a few kilobytes rather than megabytes. Done widely enough this would indeed help lower the strain on communication infrastructures during times of emergency while allowing more people to update their status.

You need something to compare it to; it's right in the article: "For comparison, humans and chimpanzees split somewhere between 5 and 7 million years ago"

So mice and rats diverged somewhere between 12 and 24 million years ago, while the range is 5 to 7M for humans and chimps. Humans and Chimps are very different and we'd certainly not try to treat chimpanzees as 'small humans' in a lab setting. Yet we tried to do so with mice, treating them as small rats.

Just a linear comparison would tell you that rats and mice have had 3 times as long to diverge as humans, making it a good chance that they're more different than humans and chimps are, even excluding that a generation of rats/mice can be measured in months when it's decades for humans and chimps.

As for the huge range - "He left the highway somewhere in Nebraska" is an overly broad area to search for an escaped felon, but if it's the best the investigators can come up with at the moment, it's the best they can come up with. 'Specification' is already a vague line, and without DNA to compare, or even enough intact skeletal remains, it can be tough.

The problem is that they still get money from normal people who don't realize their real agenda. It's a bit like smoking way back in the day - people didn't know it was harmful*, the tobacco companies were pushing untrue messages, etc...

PETA, the organization is a lot like that. They push a specific variation on their message to the world(be ethical about the treatment of animals!) that is non-offensive to the majority of people. As a result, pet owners will donate money to them, thinking that PETA is a bit like the old NRA(which put the money towards safety education, safe firing ranges, and such) - that their money would go towards animal shelters, education, fighting animal abuse, etc... They don't realize that their money is used to fund overpaid executives and push radical agendas.

As such, we need to scream it to the rafters until enough people know to give to their local animal shelter over PETA and PETA goes bankrupt.

*Well, many did, but it wasn't advertised, there were a lot of truly ignorant people.

That was pretty much my thought. A camel that's truly pissed off isn't going to be helping you. They're big ornery creatures, after all. Meanwhile in getting the camera view the camel was provided with fodder, water, medical care, as well as all the other help that a domestic camel gets in exchange for walking around.

What I think is telling is that at $15B you could have something like 5 GW sized fission plants. Even many research reactors have provisions to use utilize it's heat to produce electricity. Yet for all that money there are not only no provisions to produce electricity using ITER, but no provisions to even be able to install components to produce electricity.

You don't actually have to have all the drops go back to the entrance. I didn't mention it in this post(or I edited it out and don't remember doing it), but putting your switch in a central location can help drastically. Though I agree, 37 meters wouldn't be enough in many cases, the extra 18 meters I mentioned can make all the difference in the world for making that one run.

But note that I recommended both running the best wire available and conduit to boot. Futureproofing is a thing.

You know, I've read his post 3 times and all I get is "saturated wireless spectrum (both 2.4 and 5)"? even CTRL-F doesn't find 'poor penetration' within it. I think you meant the GP.

Personally, I haven't had any problems with 5Ghz, it's a lifesaver in areas like apartments/dorms where congestion is a bigger problem than range.

Interesting. I didn't know that it was really possible to saturate the 5Ghz spectrum. 2.4 is easy with only having 3 non-overlapping channels, but 5Ghz has over twenty, and by default none of the channels overlap.

Last time I was in a dormitory I found over 20 networks within scanning range of the guy's room, but there was only ONE other network on the 5Ghz spectrum.

"Very Short" in this case is still 55 meters, which will more than cover 'most' houses, especially if you put the patch panel in a central location.

Citation? Per Wiki it says that cat6 can do 10Gb, just at a max of 55 meters. Cat6a can do 100M at that speed.

Given that my house is ~60x30 feet, you could darn near run the entire perimeter and still be under 55 meters.

Still, remember that typically speaking the largest cost for running wire is the labor; it's cheaper to run the 'good stuff' in the first place.

One odd thought - running conduit might not be a bad idea. Higher expense up front, but if you ever need to upgrade, such as to fiber, it'll be much easier.

Thing is, the quantity discount for a larger quantity of cat6 cable will probably make it cheaper to buy a roll of cat6 than a partial roll each of 6 and 5e. For anything but the most excessive of McMansions a single roll should more than service a home.

What you probably want is plenum/riser grade cable.

Also, I'd spend the money to put jacks & a patch panel in.

Depends on the task and area. Having watched some construction efforts over time, I don't see many people idle 'long term' in my local area. The latest had a guy standing around much of the time looking idle - but every 4 minutes or so he was busy for 30 seconds directing the latest truck where to dump it's fill dirt. You also had a couple flaggers working to ensure that the truck was able to get back on the road to head back for more dirt.

After that, well, you're going to have a safety monitor who's job is solely to look for and manage dangerous situations. It doesn't take many prevented injuries to pay for him. Construction manager/foreman, who's job is to coordinate with everybody else(mostly by jaw-jacking). Since it's often heavy work, regular breaks are needed.

Or maybe you work in an area where the unions have gone nuts...