My 81 year-old mother has never owned a computer. So yes it's not good to have critical government services only on apps or websites that require log in or subscriptions. Although to her it doesn't matter since she has no clue of these sites.
We went through a hurricane in 2022 and that was an eye opener too. Most "land lines" are no longer a line to anywhere it's just a phone connected to the Internet. Anyone with that type phone had no service after 24 hours without power. My 85 uncle still (even now) had an actual land line and it worked no issues.
After the hurricane no citizen had any way to communicate. Cell towers failed when generators ran out of fuel. No fuel because gas stations couldn't pump gas without power.
My dad passed away just a year earlier he had been on an oxygen generator that needed power 24/7. I don't think he would have survived. I'm not sure if I could even have reached 911.
For awareness radio is the best solution but even emergency services radio stations are being decommissioned here in Canada in favour of Internet services.
Re the "land lines", I think the answer to that is not "keep 100+ year old copper infrastructure running" but "make our modern infrastructure as reliable as Ma Bell made it 100 years ago".
> "make our modern infrastructure as reliable as Ma Bell made it 100 years ago"
Sadly, I don't think that makes sense. Switches have a lot more to do a lot faster when it comes to the internet as compared to a phone. 100 years ago, calls were completed by a person physically moving one or more wires from one plug to another.
Better to have an emergency system that will always work - and maybe the only way to keep an emergency system maintained is to use it during non-emergencies. Hard phone lines and radio.
They also have better, more ubiquitous technology. Is an off-the-shelf managed Ethernet switch on a UPS really less reliable per user than a 5ESS? I don't know, but surely only marginally because both are pretty close to 100%, and the main cause of failures is human errors on both systems.
The actual problem people have with VoIP landlines is that they require power at the customer end. A traditional analog POTS line supplies power from the central office so it doesn't need any from the customer, unless they want to use a cordless phone, which takes more power than the central office provides. A fiber VoIP line requires power at both ends no matter what.
Note the original phones actually didn't have "central battery" as they call it. Instead each phone had its own battery, designed for about 6 months of usage, and every 6 months the phone company sent a wagon around to replace everyone's phone batteries.
Yeah I bought a five bay Synology NAS two or three years ago I think it and three 18TB WD Red drives total cost $3,000CAD? I was going to save up for two more drives. Now each drive is $1,000 CAD a 150% jump. edit: I checked $1,350 each so about 250% jump ugh!
I hate how normal ads seem to be to young people (under age 30). Just seeing TikTok videos secondhand on YouTube the videos seems stuffed with people pushing crap. YouTube channels none are without ads either by YouTube or by the channel owners.
Plus the "oh you have an add blocker!!" whining if you dare try to slow the firehose of ads coming at you. Yes I do have an ad blocker because it seems my entire existence is fodder for your website or app's ad machine to capture and use.
Lets be fair, here. Traditional TV was ~40 minutes of content with 20 minutes of ads. I still remember televised holiday movies "presented with limited commercial breaks by Folgers, where the best part of waking up..." or whoever was sponsoring it. Radio stations had to power their transmitters and pay their staff, so they had ads. Newspapers use ads to keep themselves affordable. This has always been a business model.
Also some TV shows had ads written in. USA network was pretty bad with this with ("White Collar" comes to mind - there are some pretty obvious Ford advertisements in a few eps, "Burn Notice" had very obvious alcohol placements.)
You say "was" as if it was a thing of the past. But public broadcasting still exists in many countries in Europe, including radio and TV. They have either less or no ads and their quality is much higher than that of purely ad-funded private stations that nowadays are sometimes even completely automated.
Hard disagree. At least commercial entertainment providers have to work to retain their customers, unlike public broadcasters where they get funded (either via taxes or forced licenses) no matter how many people dislike them.
It sounds like you are speaking from a theoretical perspective. In practice, there is not enough money in radio ads to put any effort in producing material of decent quality. As an objective metric, I found in Germany that the private stations literally broadcast at half the bitrate of the public stations where I tested it.
No I speak from a practical perspective. Publicly funded radio and televisions is pure cancer. I don't care about the bitrate they use to encode their crap when it's crap in the first place.
Yes I was there it wasn't as bad as now. TV or radio it was never the same three ads over and over and over. And the media is now truncated so cram in more ads. Plus the time between ads is shorter. So it's basically ads with a brief TV show in between mostly ads.
>Traditional TV was ~40 minutes of content with 20 minutes of ads.
No! This is utterly false! TV for much of American history was about 9 minutes of advertising per hour of content. Then Cable came out with no ads at all. The US does not have a legal limit, so as our culture got more and more hyped about squeezing every single dime out of counterparties, companies have been increasing advertising.
In the 60s, companies were willingly leaving money on the table.
In the UK, you are still limited to only 9 minutes per hour of advertising.
I grew up under communism. On TV, we had full movies without ads. There was 3-5min ad segment right before main evening news, that was it.
I could not understand how people can watch movie interrupted 10x by an add break.
Not wishing the return of communism, but yeah, I would simply ban all ads. No useful purpose to the society, whatsoever. Treat it like smoking and other drugs. Yes, can fill the coffers, but overall it is detrimental to the society.
If you want info about something you need, there are catalogues, consumer groups, enthusiast forums and internet search in general. Yes, the ads can be used to create new needs. Overall (if you really think what this achieves), that is a bug, not a feature.
Yes, there will be ways to sneak-in ads in a shady way, but that can be prosecuted. And the scale of exposure matters, a lot.
And that's with management. Here on the east coast of Canada cod was a big industry and was managed by Dept of Fisheries and Oceans aka DFO. The problem was foreign fishing freezer ships just over the maritime border. They took whatever they wanted to and were no restricted even by their own countries. Canada almost went to war with Spain and Portugal we even sent warships to the area.
I have hypothyroidism I don't experience "as soon as you take the pill you have a 5min timer to taking a dump." Are you drinking coffee or tea? You shouldn't eat or drink for an hour after taking a synthroid pill.
Hi, from the other coast. I wish I had solar maybe someday. Do you ever watch Artisan Electric from the UK? He tried to run his shop on 100% solar+battery. He ran into a problem where sunny day batteries full shop using power but the panels themselves were throttling. They had no where to send the extra power. He bought a bitcoin floor heater (lol), charged EVs, and some other stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evkdqTcMbWM
Yeah that's the point. Most systems are over producing on peak hours of peak days so they can average out to enough power on lower light days. You can buy more batteries, but if you don't have batteries it's waste.
hope you're handy with a soldering iron (reflow station?) because eventually the passive components are going to start failing and I don't imagine you'll be able to plug off the shelf components into a Dell
I never used to drink any caffeine. In fact the few times I had tried it when I was a teen or my 20s it made my chest pound my heart raced so much. It was Lebanese strong cardamom coffee so maybe not the best example.
Then at age 34 I started a new job my first shift work job, late evenings, some overnight jobs. I started off with fancy coffee like french vanilla. A year or so later the first Starbucks opened. I was drinking venti quad shot lattes.
Then energy drinks were permitted for sale here (we had a can ban for years). I recall after drinking a Rockstar 750ml for breakfast and the following muscle spasms made me consider I should tone it down.
So I've settled a bit a small coffee in the evening. Sometimes I don't even finish it.
