There's only one reason Google gives anything away 'for free' - it's because they're mining data from your connections to better target ads at you. They absolutely monitor every DNS lookup on their servers and use those lookups as part of their profile on you as a user.

I was having problems because the TV was interfering with the RF signal between the Chromecast and the WAP. Here's what I did, with excellent results:

https://productforums.google.c...

$20 worth of cabling, and I got the thing connected via Cat5. Works great now, no disconnects anymore, and it no longer takes up a spot on wireless device list in the WAP.

Foxconn executive: "We'll have a black factory in 3 years!"

Communist Party: "If you do that, all your people will be unemployed, and instead of slaving away at a phone factory, making useless crap for American idiots, we'll have people available to protest our mismanaged government"

FC: "Not my problem"

CP: "Gulag."

FC: "We'll have a 30% robot presence in 5 years!"

To ensure no mistakes are made.

but they don't provide unfiltered access to the country with more internet consumers than anyone else in the world - China.

These plans are an end-run around the Great Firewall, make no mistake.

I have my popcorn waiting for when the Chinese government decides to start shooting the satellites down.

Good point - I was assuming geosync orbits.

No way. The latency would be ridiculous for most use cases. This is only actually marketable for a couple of situations -

1. Orbital internet service. The ISS can surf porn.
2. Remote internet service. The researchers at Macmurdo can surf porn.
3. Circumventing state filters on internet content. The Chinese can surf porn.
4. Interplanetary internet service. The Mars rover and future moon/Mars colonies will eventually be able to surf porn.

That was the topic of a Law & Order SVU a couple weeks ago.

Government can and should create money to provide for the General Welfare in the form of a Basic Income.

Create money just to give out to people? Seriously? Please open a history book and look up Germany in 1934, or a newspaper and look at Zimbabwe. Printing money to pay government bills just screws the public. Money printing must be offset by taxes or some other destruction of currency, such as a natural deflationary trend or a paper shredder, or you wind up with loaves of bread costing thousands of dollars.

Obviously you're right. I'm not advocating for replacing all higher voltage AC for low voltage DC. What I'm saying is, maybe we can do both - each for its own purpose.

We already have 240V AC. We just have a split-phase system to provide it for the few special cases (dryers and ovens) that require it.

Thanks to the advent of using a USB port as a power connector, most everything DC is around 5v, usually less than 1A

Until you see Russians who aren't carrying broomsticks.

At the same time, when you hear hoofbeats, you think horses, not zebras.

The problem we're having is a whole bunch of people claiming we have unicorns.

Let's wait and see what happens before we all go to Mars, eh?