I have to disagree, for several reasons. First off, file sizes just keep increasing. Instead of people thinking their televisions at home look great in "full 1080 HD resolution"? Now, everyone's moving to 4K TV, with 8K being the high-end offering. That means streaming television supporting those higher resolutions is going to use 4x to 8x the bandwidth it used to.

Second, any avid gamer knows how big the downloads have gotten for modern games. The regular updates they push out, alone, are typically 35GB to 350GB+ in size. Now, imagine you've got a family at home with at least 2 or 3 people playing online games on their machines. They don't want to have to wait 20-25 minutes to start playing every time it says an update is required first.

Beyond all of that, though? I've found fiber connections used in an office environment are handled a little differently than what people have at home. EG. I can start uploading 4 or 5 large archives to, say, Microsoft Azure cloud storage, right in the middle of the workday -- and nobody else using the office network even notices. That's largely because we have multi-thousand dollar routers in the office and they're properly configured to prioritize certain types of traffic like VoIP phone calls, and to throttle connections intelligently so everyone gets a fairly equal piece of the total connection "pie" as they work. It's not that reasonable to expect residential users to have similar setups, or to even know how to configure them.

My cable provider now offers 2GB download speed service, but it's problematic in the sense most people still have devices with wired Ethernet ports that only handle up to 1 gig. speeds. I have a pretty expensive Linksys Atlas mesh router at home (cost $850 or so for the 3 piece set, a few years back), and it doesn't have a port on it faster than 1 gig. for the cable modem to attach to.

Obviously, the provider is happy to supply their own combo modem/router to use but with a monthly cost attached.

But there's just not a good reason in 2026 to not make a least gigabit connections a standard offering. Nobody's "unfairly discriminating" against services like satellite with any of this. Those technologies have always been considered wireless alternatives to use when you're in too rural of an area to expect anything else. Invest in building out fiber networks and those techs will just become what you use when you're mobile.

Honestly? I think your last statement there is a key point that should receive a little more attention. It seems possible --- heck, even prudent -- for a person to question possible negative outcomes from mRNA vaccines, while still fully recognizing that it makes good sense to use one on an existing disease. Even in a nearly worst-case scenario? You're talking about cancer, which surely kills a person if not treated, vs a theoretical risk of some long-term problems from an mRNA vaccine (some of which even anti-vax types admit aren't showing up except in a certain percentage of vaccinated people).

That has much more to do with people being creatures of habit than being stupid.

I'm old enough to have spent a long time driving cars before voice recognition was a thing. Probably dating myself here, but I remember how excited my friend was when he got a new Nissan Z car and it actually spoke to him, saying things like "Your fuel is low!" and "The door is ajar!"

I spent years trying to utilize voice recognition systems when they came out, and was consistently frustrated. Some required I memorize their specific set of words they understood (cough, Chrysler ...) and didn't do anything else. Others just couldn't understand what I said half the time. By the time any of these systems in cars worked well, I'd given up on them as more hassle or gimmick than they were worth.

At least w/Infotainment touchscreens, you get visual confirmation of what you picked/selected. Voice commands get super annoying as soon as it misunderstands you once and starts the wrong process.

My home server is an old HP Proliant DL380P that's full of DDR3 memory and 18 LFF SATA drives. Even though it's probably circa 2014 or so, it just keeps on reliably doing what I need. Currently running TrueNAS Scale on it with Plex, NextCloud and a TailScale VPN. (May also spin up a dedicated game server for "Pal World" since our extended family have been playing it a lot lately.)

Every time I think about retiring it for something newer -- it just doesn't add up financially to do it. The crazy memory and mass storage prices right now will keep me away from that idea again for a while, I think ... baring a complete main board failure.

For what it's worth? The "K shaped economy" is something not all economists think is a "new normal" for America.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/e...

It's at least one possibility that the "K" is staring to reverse course a bit, with the "legs" of the K starting to move closer together again? "Income inequity" isn't necessarily a thing that needs to be stomped out/removed. But it's really important that the low to middle income people don't continue on a downward trend of losing purchasing power while doing the same amount of labor/work to try to earn it.

It's probably a core component of a free-market capitalist society that as you earn more money than you need to survive, you're able to leverage it via investing to potentially earn still more. That's where you'll always have some income inequity. The people who haven't been successful enough to invest surplus income will be behind those who do. Again though.... I'd say there's nothing wrong with that. The problem is when people do everything they're able to do to earn what they need and still keep falling short of their basic needs. There has to at least be some long-term path to "get ahead" if you're just treading water to survive.

I remember being absolutely burnt out on school by the time I reached grade 7 or 8. I started out enjoying learning. In fact, I was the kid who won the contest at our public library over the summer, twice in a row, for reading the most books on my own. I was also "that kid" who really got into doing those science fair projects and having one go on to some sort of regional finals.

I think what really started ruining things for me was the combination of way too much homework and too many classes (by high school, at least) where teachers felt it necessary to fill 4 chalkboards full of notes each day that we had to copy in our notebooks, as study material for their quizzes and exams. Oh, and of course, we still had to read a chapter or two of the provided hard-cover textbook.

I mean, there are SO many truly entertaining stories one can tell about history (YouTube is chock-full of them!), and yet - almost every History teacher I had in school insisted on dry/dull spewing of names, dates and places that had to be copied down, memorized, and spit back. And I'll admit math was always a struggle for me. I just never reached a point where I found any of it "enjoyable". But it never helped me that my math teachers always seemed to cover a steady "topic per day" without much care if we understood one of them or not. Everything built on everything else though, so as soon as I got lost with one or two items, it became a downward spiral. All they could suggest is, "Get tutoring!" ... and frankly? That's the LAST thing a school age kid/teen wants to hear when they've got so much of their waking life already occupied with the school day + hours of homework in the evening.I finally got a really good math teacher in college one year, who made a lot of it make sense for me. But it was one of those remedial classes that I think worked for me because she only taught us in a small group and made sure each of us understood each topic. I was always much better with reading and writing, but even a few of the English Lit. type courses I had were FAR more painful than they should have been. I mean, forcing us to read a specific novel to answer quiz questions on it and report on it later is counter to the way any sane person enjoys reading. (Who goes to a book store and has the clerk shove a book in their face - saying you must buy and read this one now?) Why couldn't they have a selection of books about different topics to choose from?

I dunno.... I guess I can see how AI could cause the same kind of "mental laziness" a calculator does vs learning to do a problem by hand? But calculator results are absolutes. AI makes mistakes and often requires creative re-wording of questions and playing with adding rules/restrictions to the output. If it's simply taught that it has to be used only as a tool, and one with limitations? It shouldn't stop the curious from wanting to learn. I wonder how much of that was already crushed by the system?

I, for one, doubt we'll see air traffic control replaced by AI any time soon. The big reason is accountability. If one air traffic controller completely screws things up and causes a plane crash -- that person can be singled out, terminated, and things return to normal. If the AI they replaced the human workers with screws up and causes a plane crash? Now you're talking about years of ongoing investigation, arguments/debates and pressure to bring the human workers back.

My own experience using Reddit is that it's really a mixed bag when it comes to forum moderation.
On some of the forums, moderators seem to do their due diligence and people receive warnings before outright bans, with explanations of why they were warned.

In others, you just get a sudden permanent ban, with nobody ever replying if you ask for an explanation.

For example, I work for a company that uses "Docuware", a fairly expensive (and somewhat obscure) document management software package. We paid to migrate our on-site server to their cloud-based solution a while back, but during that process, our support contract expired for the on-site version. We were assured we didn't need to spend the money renewing it just to get help finishing the migration. But we ran into some issues in the meantime (largely because we had to hold off on cutting over fully to the cloud, to retain compatibility with an outside vendor we shared some of the data with). I discovered Reddit had a Docuware subreddit (woo!), and asked a couple questions in there. I got a public reply from a guy in a foreign country who promised he could assist me. But then, he private messaged me, hitting me up for some large hourly fee. In other words, he was just looking for targets to sell his services but pretending he was just another helpful user in the public forum.

Shortly after I sent him a private reply thanking him but declining his services? I was permanently banned from the subreddit. No explanation... nothing. Looks like it was really just set up for Docuware consultants to make a few bucks.

but ours has the bonus of releasing radioactive waste!

https://www.waste360.com/nuisa...

It seems like the fight goes back and forth about "just cameras" vs "cameras + sensors", when all I can make of it is that the REAL answer lies in how good the hardware and software is processing the incoming data?

Tesla, for example, scrapped the cameras + lidar idea, largely out of frustration that both inputs often led to the computer interpreting the scene in conflicting ways. "Camera visual seems to indicate that's just a light pole on the side of the road but lidar image shows it may be a person starting to walk into the road." (Maybe that's a poor specific example, but I heard talks about it saying things along these lines were the struggle.)

If Waymo is arguing humans can only do so much with our eyes, so "superhuman levels of driving" require more? Again, it seems to me like more CPU power and better software is that "more"? Computers can do math FAR quicker than my brain can... and that's been true for decades. Superhuman levels of driving safely seem like they could happen with systems just using cameras OR systems collecting data from multiple sources?

You're right, but the problem is going to be location in many cases. Would a former data center make a great public library? Technically, it might. But when it was built out in the middle of some farm land, where they originally got a good deal on the land by buying some farmers out who were willing to sell? Now, it might not make so much sense.

Or as an example closer to home for me? Our own city is fielding requests to construct data centers right now. There are rumors about our now closed-down steel plant being a potential site. Great for the guy who owns the property and wants to unload it. But a data center there would mean tearing out and removing an existing environment that was good for manufacturing. If you said ok -- no more steel made here but we could do cement, or process glass? That would be an equivalent replacement that would bring back the lost jobs. A data center really won't ... and if it closes? I'm not sure people would want it as office space in that part of town.

Reality is? The places that allow new data centers where they interfere with the existing population are just going to wind up with regrets.

They remind me a bit of the battles over putting in new landfills/dumps. Everyone knows we need them, but it's always "not in my back yard"!

The thing is? The need for more data centers is questionable. If all this AI growth turns the corner and companies decide much of it was just overblown hype? Then those data centers will quickly wind back down again.

Even in "best case" scenarios, they don't employ many people once they're constructed, and they use large amounts of resources -- which tend to be sold at discounted rates as part of the deals struck when they move into an area. Everyone else gets stuck covering any losses by way of rate increases.

A landfill may smell bad, but it's not using up the lion's share of available electric power in my town or using a big portion of available clean water.

I don't understand how the entire concept isn't just outlawed and thrown out? The core reason we have a stock market is to allow business growth/prosperity. Company owners trade off their original ownership of a successful business for a chance to get investor income flowing in to make the business more successful than they could make it on their own.

Prediction markets are nothing more than gambling. There's no "investing" in a business happening at all with this.

To be fair, cellular data is really poor in quite a few places in America, when using ANY of the "second tier" reseller carriers. (Won't speak for other countries.)

EG. We have Spectrum Mobile right now (mostly due to a bundle deal with our broadband at home), and while voice calls work pretty much as expected, anywhere I go? The data is terrible! They say they're using Verizon's towers but it's obvious Verizon is throttling the heck out of them and/or only allowing them on SOME of the towers in a given area.

When I had T-Mobile for a few years previously? It had bad holes in coverage areas, but it worked quite well where it was built out (usually your bigger cities).