you see my numbers in my comment. I don't see any numbers in your comment (please don't give any links to the articles whose authors don't understand black body radiation formula and thus reference ISS cooling in datacenter discussion :)
The problem I have seen is when I need it most, due to a rare fiber internet outage, so does everyone else nearby and cellular data becomes saturated and unusable.
In locations where fiber is not available (like my place), cable is the next best option, and cable has a lot more unexpected downtime. I could see this being a good backup, especially for small businesses like retail shops that couldn't afford to have their POS go down for half a day.
Agreed retail is a good customer for this tech. But even after getting fiber personally, it gets cut a lot by landscaping crews. Most of the time it’s a residential line that takes a day to fix. But a few times it’s been a main line and it takes 3-4 days. Maybe I’m unusual but that’s been my experience
Around here, it’s Starlink >> Fiber >> Cable because our lines are above ground and outages are frequent.
Fiber is less expensive than and more than 10x faster than starlink, in fairness.
Our 5g towers seem to run off the fiber lines, so it’s not really a backup (and gets overwhelmed anyway).
I’m considering getting fiber in addition to starlink, but I wish they’d just buried the lines.
I see telephone trucks repairing downed lines we’d rely on many dozens of times a year. Digging a trench would probably pay for itself in a year or two.
> Digging a trench would probably pay for itself in a year or two.
I know some people running independent community fiber ISPs. Digging trenches can be a nightmare depending on the neighbourhood. You can have property ownership issues, other utilities being present, permit nightmares, different ground/soil types, etc. That ignores the fact that when somebody else digs they can hit your lines and repairing that is a pain.
Digging is better, though. But it’s not necessarily as easy as one may think.
Where I work just acquired new property and are deploying a new site. It took 9 months, from date of first contact, before the ISP could come out, bore under the road, and run fiber to our building from two poles away. And that's just a short ~500 feet underground run.
I couldn't imagine the amount of permitting and logistics involved in trying to bury an entire run across town.
My community did the big dig around 2001. They finished around 2010. It was a huge project that took hundreds if not thousands of man-hours. I'm not sure if anyone ever actually calculated the total cost. And this is for a pretty small town. Now the day-to-day connectivity is much better, and weather almost never knocks us out, but when something does get knocked out, it takes longer to fix.
Overall, it's much nicer. No ugly telephone poles, don't have to worry about weather, just reliable, strong service. But to think it pays for itself in 2 years is laughable.
You may or may not be aware, but all plans rack and stack somewhere in a priority list called QCI (Quality of Service Class Identifier). AT&T, for example will put at QCI 7-9 depending on your plan.
I love Microcenter. Built my current gaming rig with all parts purchased there. It's been about 8 years, so not sure if they still operate this way... but when I built my PC, I:
- Went online, ordered everything for pickup (didn't pay yet)
- Drove there, they had it all bagged and ready
- I showed them online prices for some of the parts
- For the ones they could verify (I think it was all of them) by going to the website and checking, they matched the prices
- Then I paid and took my stuff home
I also got my M1 MBP there (it was 25% off when the M2 models came out).
Please, if you have a Microcenter near you, give them your business. I don't want them to go away. Once all this memory madness dies down, I'm going to go there to build a new gaming rig.
I can’t support Linux as the first computer enough. Both of my boys got an Ubuntu desktop for their 8th birthday. I showed them some basics. They were motivated to figure it out. They learned how things work along the way.
Also no scammy popups or notifications causing confusion or them granting access “just click yes and it goes away”.
Ununtu (non root) and timekeeper plus. I work with them when they want to install something or do updates.
They have steam, minecraft, OpenRA for games and are happy.
They create music, program arduinos, edit videos they make with friends.
I agree. It take quite a bit longer to initially detect things. Then it also miss identifies certain things. Apparently I have 11 refrigerators (I dont).
Also it finally did pick up my EV charger yesterday after 5 weeks.
I hope they continue to support it. I originally bought it because I don’t trust Duke Energy. Now it will be in the meters owned by Duke. Seems like a perverse reversal.
Epirus makes some good stuff from what I hear. Its use cases are limited though. Its another exquisite system. This means it will be high cost and low volume.
Sure bases and high value assets will have great protection. They already do. Stinger missiles (1 example) have been able to hit quads since the day quads took to the air. The cost asymmetry (150k+ vs 1k) means they are rarely used so you have to let most drone threats go.
The opening days of the Ukraine war showed that all you need to do to stop an army is tale out its undefended logistics tail. Fuel trucks, water, ammo, food, etc. These need to be protected also, and exquisite system like Epirus wont be part of these convoys.
Another take away from Ukraine is the lay-in-wait tactic where drones sit near the road hidden and wait for you to come by. The Epirus system (and most of the other cUAS systems) are not able to help. You are probably over a slight hill, hidden by trees, or too close to the danger zone where a bigger system would also destroy you.
Basically everything and everyone has to have a means of engaging these threats. It must be cheap (cost per kill including the initial system purchase), easy to use, and widely available.
Being logged out on a daily basis and having to login twice (once for the main client, once for calendar specifically) is beyond annoying. Hey maybe you would like to try copilot that we are shoving down your throat at every opportunity even through you disabled it as much as possible at the account level. Oh you thought you would get notifications reliably? Thats cute. We will only deliver them randomly. But yeah, sure, teams is better than slack or mattermost. We use mattermost internally. Has the good parts of slack without the lock in.
They also ignore the default browser by default for some reason to force-feed Edge to users. There's an option to change that but why is it ignoring user choices by default?
I do mechatronics for a living. I have (and still have) some “hobby” 3d printers. For my job, I don’t want to screw around with settings, I just need the part to come out well.
My day to day goto is the creality K1 line. I have 3x K1Cs and a K1 Max. The K1 Max is for you. It costs about $800. 300mm cubed build area. Runs every material I throw at it. PLA, PETG, TPU, Nylon, ASA, PC, etc.
It has a cloud option, but I don’t use. They all run on a separate vlan so no phoning home. Doesn’t cause any issues.
They run unlocked klipper firmware, so if you want to mess with it feel free. Also means most slicers work well with them. I typically use OrcaSlicer but the CrealityPrint and Cura work also.
I don’t recommend the K2, it has quite a few annoying bugs. The Enders are hobby machines for sure. Go with K1C or even K1 Max for the bigger bed. You won’t regret it.
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