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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • Where I am there’s a smallish internet provider, Sonic, that advertises almost-too-good-to-be-true service. As a former subscriber…nope, it’s pretty much what they say it is. It was gigabit fiber and I could iperf to a university server and get 900Mbps+ (depending on time of day). Fast.com would say 1Gbps.

    My only complaint was that iirc the advertised price was for service, with an extra charge for router. BYO router meant you were charged slightly more for service (this is my recollection, not positive though).

    They are a pretty vocal net neutrality advocate, and from what the tech told me they offer “best effort” service, meaning while ATT fiber may support gigabit, they’ll throttle it and upcharge you for the extra speed; Sonic, afaik, didn’t do that. They now offer 10Gbps Internet for I think the same price as the gigabit, but I think you need to BYO network gear to take advantage of it.

    Unfortunately our new place doesn’t offer them, otherwise I would still be a subscriber.

    Point being…too good to be true usually is just that, but sometimes it’s not 🤷










  • Not every other kind of technology though. I think the problem is that batteries get lumped in the same category as “modern tech” (e.g., microchips and storage), rather than with energy tech.

    For example, Wikipedia says a poat-war VW bug got around 35mpg. That’s similar to the combined mileage of a Civic that’s 50 years newer. Yes, the Civic is more powerful and weighs more — but we’re not talking Moore’s law improvements.

    Same if you look at power. A 1967 Corvette 427 was listed at 430 horsepower; a modern base Vette is 490 (or 670 for the Z06). Sure, the mileage is way better, etc., but again, hardly Moore’s law improvements.

    Energy and power are tricky.