Posts by David_42

Netflix shows South Korea a rerun of 'We Won't Pay Your Telcos For Bandwidth'

Re: Paid twice

Interesting that people would have trouble with interstate banking in the US. My main bank is in Texas and I've never lived there. My investment accounts are in New York City and I've never lived there. My local bank is headquartered in Seattle, Washington and I've never lived there. I haven't had trouble moving funds from one bank to another in 30 years.

One of the local ISPs, sells "up to 10 Mbps" accounts. Had it installed - 0.49 Mbps. Which is in the range of "up to". Cancelled two days later.

If you could forget the $125 from Equifax and just take the free credit monitoring, that would be great – FTC

So, please take the service that costs us next to nothing to provide, because it's 95% of the deal and costs us almost nothing. Did I mention it costs us almost nothing?

And we're back live with the state of the smartphone market in 2019. Any hope? Yeah, nah

All of this "innovation" is less useful as battery life continues to decline. How many of you would be okay with a phone that was 3 mm thicker if the battery life doubled?

Enjoying that 25Mbps internet speed, America? Oh, it's just 6Mbps? And you're unhappy? Can't imagine why

Re: No @#$&

IIRC there were 80 columns, 72 for code and 8 for numbering the cards, just in case.

Probably the exception, but my observed speed has been creeping up slowly over the last four years. I'm on the lowest tier and it was around 11 mbps down in 2015. It tests fairly consistently at 15-17 mbps now. When I signed up, the agent said the lowest tier wasn't available in my area, but I signed up online without any problem. Even 11 mbps was enough for two movies at the same time and that only happened when my wife's daughter was visiting.

Forgive me, father, for I have used an ad-blocker on news websites...

Not even one tiny little wafer

I've never clicked on an ad, I never will, so why download them? Advertisers pay for views, so if I don't download I'm saving them money.

The Internet of Things isn't just for Bluetooth toothbrushes, y'know

People who push the Internet of things generally over-look cost. A $95 connected light bulb will probably be replaced by a $2 dumb one after the former burns out in two years. Or a $99 toothbrush vs a $3 one that does just as good a job at cleaning teeth. My security system uses wired cameras for three reasons: cost, reliability, and security. And reliability includes having one UPS for the whole system.

Speaking in Tech: Windows is coming to smart refrigerators

My fridge contains about 10% of the food in my house, monitoring this small portion of the total has zero value. I suspect there will be a few people that will purchase a smart fridge, just as there are a few people who will replace a $3 light bulb with a $95 net-connected bulb that will burn out just as quickly. I had a bunch of X-10 devices installed in my home about 20 years ago. Realizing that I was replacing $1 switches with a multi-decade life with $20 devices that lasted about 3 years, cured me.

The developer died 14 years ago, here's a print out of his source code

Run away!

The closest I ever got to a situation like this was a company that had a system built around a S100 box running a customized version of MPM. There were 7 IBM PC1s connected via serial cables, all running another customized version of CPM. The main application was a database designed and built by someone who "died in a knife fight in jail". I spent a couple hours looking things over and then told the owner that I would not be able to help them, so there was no charge for the consultation.

Getting metal hunks into orbit used to cost a bomb. Then SpaceX's Falcon 9 landed

Re: Real numbers would be interesting

The latest Falcon 9 features larger fuel tanks and super-cools the LOX, that takes care of extra fuel requirement for landing. The engines provide 30% more thrust, so the payload to LEO has actually gone up slightly despite the extra weight of the cold gas control system, the fins and the landing gear.

SpaceX starts nine-day countdown to first flight of the new Falcon

Barge landings

It's unlikely that SpaceX will get permission soon enough to do a land landing, but since the central core of the Falcon Heavy will almost always have to make a barge landing, the practice is good.