[HN Gopher] People had to be convinced of the usefulness of elec... ___________________________________________________________________ People had to be convinced of the usefulness of electricity Author : olalonde Score : 203 points Date : 2023-03-19 15:16 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com) | photochemsyn wrote: | Lightbulbs powered by electricity were a convincing app, and so | was the electricity-powered washing machine and similar labor- | saving appliances: | | https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/how-appliance-boom-moved-mo... | | Notably, electrification of rural areas lagged well behind that | of cities and towns until the Rural Electrification | Administration was created in 1935: | | https://livingnewdeal.org/a-light-went-on-new-deal-rural-ele... | | > "The REA continued into the postwar era and helped the | percentage of electrified farms in the United States rise from 11 | percent [1935] to almost 97 percent by 1960. The New Deal had | helped rural America achieve near-total electrification." | | This is comparable to the situation with high-speed internet in | the US at present: | | > "The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a New Deal agency | established in 1934, estimates that today a quarter of rural | Americans and a third on tribal lands do not have access to | broadband internet, defined as download speeds of at least 25 | megabytes a second. Fewer than 2 percent of urban dwellers have | this same problem." | | This is what you get if you privatize and deregulate basic | infrastructure services: huge holes in coverage and overpriced | monopolistic control of the rest of it. | hyperthesis wrote: | Agree, infrastructure is worthless, applications are | everything. | | Mr Edison is famous for "the lightbulb" (actually, "a"), but | what he really did was lightbulbs + power stations (through | General Electric). | | Mr Birdseye is famous for frozen fish, but what [the company | who bought his patent] really did was frozen fish + freezers in | supermarkets. | | The joke about the first telephone being the hardest sell | (because there's no-one to call) has another problem, of no | phone-lines, exchanges or (today's) cell-towers. | | \muse I wonder if a solution to holes/monopoly abuse is to ease | entry-to-market? The standard incumbent response is to deny | oxygen to entrants, by giving great deals at the low end (like | today's "free tiers"). Though, historically, regulatory capture | instead raises barriers to entry. | photochemsyn wrote: | I wouldn't say infrastructure is worthless, more that | infrastructure creates new market opportunities, and without | it, markets just won't function well. For example, good roads | allow farmers to transport their produce to distant markets | in all weather conditions, good electricity distribution | means farmers start buying washing machines, better broadband | means rural people might start buying online services and so | on. | | Trying to game basic infrastructure for profits runs counter | to this notion, and it's thus an area of the economy where | government management makes the most sense. | hyperthesis wrote: | Applications are infrastructure's value - without produce | to transport (or other applications), what value roads? | Infrastructure is means to application ends. | | So yes, given benefiting applications, infrastructure | improvements derive value. | | Their value is entirely derived. They have no intrinsic | value. They are, in themselves, worthless. | | Just semantics. | | I tend to agree with your take on public infrastructure, | but I haven't thought about it enough to form a definite | opinion. | | \tangentially related: arguing metabolism pathways need to | exist before genes can improve them | https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-biochemists-view-of- | lifes-o... | GordonS wrote: | > Mr Birdseye is famous for frozen fish | | _ahem_ , that's _Captain_ Birdseye, thank you very much! | hyperthesis wrote: | https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Birdseye | WalterBright wrote: | > power stations (through General Electric) | | Edison founded GE. | messe wrote: | I don't think the commenter you're replying to is using | "through" in the sense of "providing power stations with | the assistance of GE", but rather "providing power by | founding GE". | bumby wrote: | Infrastructure is an enabling function. To claim it's | worthless is largely missing the point. It reminds me of the | mechanical engineers I once worked with in rocket engine | testing. Many claimed software was largely worthless because | it was only replacing existing analog alternatives. | | To the articles point, the problem is about helping people | connect the dots between the infrastructure and the work they | really care about. | asciii wrote: | > Many claimed software was largely worthless because it | was only replacing existing analog alternatives. | | Reminds me of the famous and unfortunate quotes [1] | | [1]https://www.ittc.ku.edu/~evans/stuff/famous.html | tialaramex wrote: | The Bill Gates quote at the end is unsourced. In the | unlikely event Gates ever actually said or wrote that, | somebody would have a citation. | OJFord wrote: | He denies it himself, but a plausible explanation given | here is that he perhaps meant '~ _in the lifetime of this | system_ ': | https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2863/did- | bill-g... | | (It goes back to 1985 apparently, so does seem unlikely | it came from nowhere, since it wouldn't have seemed so | ridiculous then.) | oatmeal1 wrote: | It isn't by definition a problem that there are holes in | coverage. People in the US live hugely far apart from each | other because the government has paved far more roads than they | should have. Bringing broadband to people in rural areas is | hundreds of times more expensive than in urban areas because | people are too far apart. | nonethewiser wrote: | How is 11% having electricity comparably to 75% having | broadband? Feels like you're really reaching to make this | segway to politics. | zamnos wrote: | Because the 11% became 97% via the New Deal and government | investment, not through market forces. That's not reaching to | bring up politics, that's the history of what happened. Rural | areas are more expensive to run physical infrastructure for, | for fewer people, compared to an urban or suburban | environment; that underlying fact hasn't changed since the | 1920's when electricity was being run. How it immediately | becomes political is the question of who pays for what, and | how much of my taxes are going towards something that doesn't | direct benefit me. | nonethewiser wrote: | But that proves my point. There was no "new deal" that got | us to 75% broadband coverage. 75% is clearly way better | than 11% therefore not a valid parallel. | zamnos wrote: | There absolutely has been a _ton_ of government money | funneled to, basically Verizon and Comcast shareholders | to try and provide rural Internet service via the | Telecomms Act of 1996 along with everything else that | came after that. That the government hasn 't been getting | good value for its money, and 75%, and at only 25 Mbit, | compared to 97% for electricity is a whole other topic. | mauvehaus wrote: | Arguably, having broadband now is more important than | having electricity then. The network effects of nearly | everyone having broadband are reducing access to offline | alternatives (e.g. bank branches closing), whereas | anything you can do with electricity can likely be done | without electricity or any additional infrastructure | beyond what's on the farm. | paulryanrogers wrote: | 75% broadband coverage is a generous interpretation, | especially as the floor of what is broad has grown. 25MB | down, 5MB up isn't actually that broad or useful as 4K | TVs and multiple simultaneous video calls become the | norm. | photochemsyn wrote: | https://www.usda.gov/broadband | | > "USDA has been investing in rural telecommunications | infrastructure for decades. Hundreds of millions of | dollars are annually available in the RUS programs both | by loans and grants all to support modern broadband | e-Connectivity in rural communities." | | > "In 2018, USDA introduced the ReConnect Program, which | has invested over $1 billion to date to expand high-speed | broadband infrastructure in unserved rural areas and | tribal lands." | | We don't let shady private corporations squat on the | roads and freeways and charge tolls to anyone who wants | to drive on them, why should we allow such behavior on | the internet trunk fiber optic cables either - or on the | copper/aluminum electricity grid, for that matter? | dsfyu404ed wrote: | >Because the 11% became 97% via the New Deal and government | investment, not through market forces. | | That 11% wasn't a static state. Electrification was | happening, government or not. | | The New Deal certainly sped it up but it takes a career | politician level of dishonesty to take a government program | that increased the rate of electrification and give said | program credit all electrification after it's commencement. | photochemsyn wrote: | I think it's fairer to say that there was a rural demand | for electricity, but that privately owned electricity | grids saw no profit in meeting that demand. Electric | appliance manufacturers did want to sell their product to | people in rural areas, and they realized that if | government built out the electrical grid, they'd benefit | from it as would rural electricity consumers. That's why | FDR's Rural Electricification programs were widely | popular. | | The only opponents were the electric power companies who | realized they might lose their captive markets if the | idea spread to the cities. Hence they started buying lots | of politicians. | oatmeal1 wrote: | Market forces would have correctly restricted the number of | people living in inefficient places to live. Rural | communities are massively more expensive to create | infrastructure for. Instead we have locked ourselves into | supporting an abnormally large number of people away from | where infrastructure can efficiently be provided. | DangitBobby wrote: | And those people living in rural areas (which are | required to sustain societies, unlike urban areas) would | become poorer and less educated as time went on due to | the economic inefficiencies of serving them well. You are | arguing for the emergence of class stratification as if | that's somehow the desired version of our society, which | is just insanity. There is a _reason_ we share costs as a | society! Free market thinking is shallow and should not | be applied here, full stop. | ghodith wrote: | Or some of them would would have moved, or not moved | there in the first place, or increased the prices of | their goods. | | Something so cynical about such low expectations. "If we | weren't in charge, they would all devolve into savagery!" | photochemsyn wrote: | https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/digital-divide-urban- | ru... | | The issue isn't politics (though it is true that the ISPs | have bought both political parties in Congress), it's | economics. Building out basic infrastructure is one of the | core necessities for widespread economic growth, and that | includes roads and bridges, the electricity grid, the water | supply, and the fiber-optic network. | | It's not a very complicated issue, and I've never seen anyone | present a coherent argument that privatized infrastructure | improves economic activity overall, it's generally the | opposite isn't it? | | I suppose if your metric is the concentration of wealth in | fewer hands, then yes, private infrastructure facilitates | that outcome, but it shrinks the overall economic activity in | terms of production of goods and services (i.e. consider the | farmer who can't get to market because the bridge is washed | out, the washing machine manufacturer who can't sell to the | farmer who has no electricity, and so on). | revelio wrote: | There's plenty of arguments for privatized infrastructure, | if you never heard them then you weren't looking for them. | For example telecoms, energy and TV monopolies have been | broken repeatedly in the 20th century in countries around | the world, nobody wants them back. There were way more | infrastructure monopolies in the early parts of the 20th | century than there are now. | photochemsyn wrote: | I'm sorry, isn't that an argument against privatized | infrastructure, which always becomes monopolistic control | of infrastructure by private interests? It's not like | competing systems of basic infrastructure are at all | plausible, we're not going to have multiple private roads | systems are we? | revelio wrote: | No? Private infrastructure doesn't always become | monopoly, that's why most infrastructure monopolies were | created by nationalization at a time when that was all | the rage. Railway monopolies, radio (e.g. BBC), telecoms, | steel, water, electricity ... lots. | | _> we 're not going to have multiple private roads | systems are we?_ | | Toll roads exist but indeed, roads are one of the cases | where building and maintaining them is easy so you don't | lose much from a state monopoly, and they take up a lot | of space so duplication is unfortunate. But there are | relatively few cases like that. | photochemsyn wrote: | Are competing water companies going to build multiple | water pipe systems to people's homes? Are competing | electricity companies going to cover cities with multiple | independent competing grids? Are competing ISPs going to | build separate fiber networks to everyone's door? Should | there be multiple rail networks owned by private parties, | or just one that everyone uses cooperatively? | | These are cases where it only makes sense to build one | system, and any such system should be under public | control, not under private monopoly control by some rent- | extracting shareholder outfit. | revelio wrote: | _> > Are competing {water,power,internet} companies going | to cover cities with multiple independent competing | {pipes}? _ | | Sure and they have done in the past. The existing | networks weren't initially built by governments, they | were built by private entrepreneurs and then | nationalized. That's true at least for power and | internet, admittedly I don't know for water piping, that | might be old enough to pre-date private companies of any | significant size. | | Now _should they_ is a different question to _will they_. | In many cases it 's OK to allow that. I think the US | still has private railway lines. In other places there | aren't any left. But I agree that for networks that | require enormous amounts of land and where there's ~no | scope for innovation, government monopolies can be | beneficial. Water, power and roads seem clear cut. We can | add gas and sewerage to that. Rail is a sort of | interesting middle ground where countries go back and | forth because there is actually scope for innovation in | how the signalling works and governments are typically | extremely slow to deploy improvements. Note that most | civilized countries don't nationalize the endpoints. | Power generators, gas wells, trains etc are owned by | private companies usually. Also, in practice these | networks are often built and maintained by private | contractors. | throwaway33381 wrote: | Ah just from how this is all written is obvious someone with a | financial interest is trying to promote GPT-4. | pessimizer wrote: | You think this five paragraph article on Smithsonian | Magazine's site is part of a conspiracy? | chordalkeyboard wrote: | 'conspiracy' is a loaded way to refer to | http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html | gcheong wrote: | This article doesn't read like a PR piece in the way PG | describes at all though in that there is no discernible | tie-in to AI or GPT as far as I can tell, so if the goal | was to promote something other than the idea that people | can sometimes be hard to convince of the value of new | technologies that eventually become ubiquitous then I | think it failed in that respect. I could see a similar | article being written about the internet itself someday | after everyone who lived through the initial skepticism | about its economic and social benefits (still dubious) | eventually passes on. | HervalFreire wrote: | I'm sure the person promoting electricity had financial | interest in it. You know there is much nuance here yet you | still had to make this simplistic comment. | | Put your real name and email address in your profile and | respond with your full identity exposed. I want to see how | history plays out. Then I can go back on these old threads to | see who was actually wrong. | | Who were the idiots against the reality of global warming? | The people who so fervently used every excuse to deny the | reality of an impending catastrophe? | | There is no difference between those people and the people | who consistently attempt to use every avenue available to | attack the abilities of AI. These aren't rational people. | They are people with an agenda that pushes them to modify | their perception of reality around them to fit that agenda. | That agenda is fear. Fear that a machine can surpass us and | replace the software craft we have spent years honing. | | My advice to you is to open up your mind a bit. | | Heck I put my full identity and contact info in my profile. I | stand by my views without hiding behind a throwaway account. | If history proves me wrong the record is here for everyone to | see. | edc117 wrote: | Some might fall into the category you've described, but I'd | hazard a guess that a lot more are afraid of the rise of AI | due to its owners. The cost to develop and operate these | machines is high, and you can be sure whoever is using them | to replace work done by people today will capture and hold | every possible penny. | | People are afraid that AI will not serve the common good, | and will instead serve a very rich few. Why? Because that's | how it's always been with new advances, and more than ever | how it is today. The vast gaps in wealth inequality will | grow much larger with AI - it needs to be addressed first. | HervalFreire wrote: | Agreed. But why be delusional? The tool is right at your | fingertips. Why deny the reality of the situation rather | then face the truth? | | If they fear the AI owners attack the owners directly. | Don't attack reality itself and say the AIs are just | stochastic parrots and there's no risk to jobs at all. | aksss wrote: | 25 MB?? Holy schnikes.. | fsckboy wrote: | > _This is what you get if you privatize and deregulate basic | infrastructure services: huge holes in coverage and overpriced | monopolistic control of the rest of it._ | | shouldn't every square inch of Alaska be electrified, | internetted, and cellphone towered? that way, just in case I | consider whether to live there, I won't have to think about the | inconvenience of it, it will make my decision easier. | | i.e. spending money on expensive infrastructure to service | small numbers of customers is not necessarily a brilliant idea. | Who knows, it may not have even paid itself back for all remote | communities within the lower 48; many rural communities are | even smaller now then there were then. | | That doesn't mean there weren't net benefits from the rural | electrification act, but you are wrong to pitch it as "evil | corporate barons vs everybody else". How about all of us | together decide what we can afford? Would you accept your kid's | argument that you pay to electrify (to code, mind you, and | union electricians) your kid's treehouse in the backyard just | because he accuses you of being a greedy tyrant if you don't? | drstewart wrote: | >deregulate basic infrastructure services | | What part of ISPs have been deregulated? Is it the bit where | they're legal monopolies in many jurisdictions? | NoZebra120vClip wrote: | 25 megabytes per second is 209,715,200bps. That's over twice as | fast as my cable ISP's present downstream connection. Is that | what they really meant? | wonnage wrote: | No, looks like they confused the units. It should be Mbit. | rhacker wrote: | Even if they mean MBit, I rarely need more than 8. What are | some of the things people do that they need something that | fast? | simoncion wrote: | > What are some of the things people do that they need | something that fast? | | Remote programmer work. I push and pull around many GBs | every day. 8Mb/second would be -at best- difficult to | bear. I also often do teleconferencing (and screen | sharing) while pushing around lots of data. | | If there were multiple people on my LAN who were doing | remote programmer work, or who were just -say- watching | "streaming" video while I was working, or -say- chose to | patch a video game while I was working, 8Mb/second would | make working impossible. | | Hell, even 40Mb/second is pretty terrible. I recently | moved from a 1400/40 Mb link to a ~300/300 Mb link. | Despite the dramatic reduction in download speed, it's | way, way, way better. | freedomben wrote: | If anyone in the household works from home, that 8 will | be totally saturated by a single video meeting. If there | are young kids that want to watch netflix, two parents | needing to work, and if you're a developer who has to | pull docker images or download a large file, God help | you. I have 35 Mbps now and it still gets very painful | sometimes. | Syonyk wrote: | "Live within the bounds of what's available" seems to be | a lost concept these days. | | I'm rural, I work remote, and I've done so for quite a | while on about a 15/3 connection. I've got somewhat | better now, and I have Starlink for the house right now | (though at the ever-increasing costs, I'm debating | dropping it and going back to a rural WISP for bulk | transfer). | | If you're on a lower speed connection... you don't try to | live life like you're on gigabit. You cache content | locally (Jellyfin or Plex solves a lot, DVD season pack | bundles are dirt cheap on eBay and a USB DVD reader can | read anything), you do lower bandwidth stuff, and you | work around the availability. I've taken many video calls | with audio over a cell phone, because my ISP was having a | crappy day. | | You can invent scenarios in which you "need" gigabit, but | they sound like the artificially constructed situations | they are, because not everyone has 16 people working from | home with another 12 insisting on their own individual 4k | streams. | Johnny555 wrote: | >You can invent scenarios in which you "need" gigabit, | | If you have to work around slow internet by buying DVD's | instead of streaming, pre-downloading movies you want to | watch, or calling in to video calls to get reliable | audio, I think it's fair to say that you "need" faster | internet. Maybe not gigabit, but definitely faster than | whatever you have now. | freedomben wrote: | This seems like your position: don't try to improve | things. just work around the situation. | | that seems silly, and I don't think that's ever been a | widespread driving philosophy. Much more common (and | sadly, also lost these days) is building a better world | for our kids and their kids, etc. Trying to improve life | for us and those around us, with hope that the next | generation has it better than we did. | Syonyk wrote: | I try. Which is why I reject a lot of the digital | nonsense that's just attention vampires for the sake of | advertising profits. | smoldesu wrote: | Docker. | rhacker wrote: | I use that too. And beyond that, the original analogy was | that the light bulb was so helpful that it spread to all | the farms and rural lands by 1960. Why do we need 25 MBit | on all the farms and rural lands? | randomdata wrote: | Agriculture moves a fair amount of data around. You | probably don't _need_ 25 Mbit today, but need more than | the ancient infrastructure can supply. The infrastructure | being built to be capable of closing the latter gap is | able to handle much more both for reasons of | accommodating future needs and simply where the | technology is now for modern installations. | | And for that reason, as a farmer, I can get gigabit | service on my farms, but where I live in an urban area | where the infrastructure isn't as old and is still | moderately capable I am topped out at 50 Mbit service. | misnome wrote: | All that tractor DRM has to phone home somehow! | smoldesu wrote: | Well, because people live on those lands. I grew up in a | rural area, and my limited access to internet almost | failed me in multiple classes that required online | testing. My bare-minimum Hughesnet setup would only give | you 50kbps after you depleted the "Full Speed" 50 | gigabytes a month of 25MBit speeds. No worries though, | only $10/gigabyte to get back online so you could take | your Biology quiz without getting kicked off halfway | through. | | Now that stuff like Starlink exists, it's easier to give | the finger to Hughesnet and exploitative WISPs. Even | still, the years I spent growing up with bare-minimum | internet at cable-package prices has made me spiteful. It | should have been addressed long before the private sector | got around to fixing it. | freedomben wrote: | Fellow ruran here, I've tried explaining to people just | how good it felt to give Hughesnet the bird (in some | regions called "the finger") when Starlink rolled in, and | until you've had nothing else it's hard to imagine how | much it affects. | | Also people forget: farmers have families and kids, etc, | and while the farmer themselves may not need much | internet, the kids can't even do basic school anymore | without it. But that said, farmers still have and watch | TVs, facetime with their families, stream music, etc. | | All that said though, Starlink is up to like $120/month | and still not reliable enough to fully ditch the backup | exploitative WISP if you work from home as I do, so | Starlink is walking dangerously close to the line of | exploitative. But they're here and working, so I will | happily pay the money. I just hope that over time the $/b | will get a lot more competitive. | michaelmrose wrote: | Infrastructure is about sufficient capacity for peak not | average usage. The first thing you have to understand is | that bandwidth is oversubscribed and largely | asymmetrical. You may easily only get 70% of bandwidth | and you'll need to get a LOT down to have even a modest | up. | | 4K streaming video can easily be 25Mbps. A family of 3-4 | people can easily have multiple TVs and each one can be | using bandwidth even when nobody is attending to it. | Presumably this family has none because none of them will | work. The average family has 25 internet using devices | including computers, laptops, consoles, smart devices | etc. Meanwhile average websites have ballooned up to 2MB | or 16Mb per page. If you get 70% of max bandwidth and | divide it even 10 ways you'll easily be waiting around 10 | seconds per page. It's common now to have a camera out | front triggered by motion but this requires more upstream | than your 8Mbps connection from 1999 is liable to have | since most connections aren't symmetrical. Same with | video conferencing which will largely be impossible. | | What's that you say johnny wants to play the latest | triple A game? Well its 80GB of data. With over | subscription and other devices you'll be very lucky to | average more than 2Mbps over the 4 days this will require | during which the family connection will suck even more | than it normally does. | fullstop wrote: | Do you live alone? | wruza wrote: | I have around 8mbps (1 mbyte/sec) and downloading | everything big is painful. Nvidia driver - 10min. Vbox | update - 3min. Linux netinst - feels like forever. Big | npm/docker/etc updates - few minutes of waiting. Witcher | 3... ohh. | | Also you can't watch 1080p without stutters while | waiting. You can't watch 1440p60 or 4k in any case. | | _Why do we need 25 MBit on all the farms and rural | lands?_ (quoted from another subthread) | | Because otherwise these areas will get stuck with <25mbps | forever, and there's already no reserve in 8-10mbps. | NoZebra120vClip wrote: | Please let's not confuse more units here. | 8Mbps (please capitalize the "M" for "mega" and lowercase | the "b" for bits) is 8,000,000 bits per second. | That translates to about 0.954 MiB/sec (Mebibytes per | second, see the "i" and the capital "B"?) which is close | enough to 1. | | We must keep in mind that there are two disparate things | being measured in this thread and by FCC. The FCC is | ostensibly measuring advertised signaling rates. Your | Gigabit Ethernet signals at 1,000,000,000 bits per | second, but can't transfer data that fast. Likewise, my | cable ISP signals at 100Mbps down and 5Mbps up (yeah, | it's criminal) but download speeds are a different thing. | | Download speeds can, and should, be measured in computer- | oriented mebibytes per second, rather than bits per | second, because you are, after all, transferring files. | (And yeah, disk space is often measured in powers of | ten...) Your ISP's data cap is undoubtedly measured in | gibibytes or tebibytes (even though they call them | gigabytes or terabytes, that's what the units mean.) | | So when you run speedtest.net or Ookla or whatever, | you're measuring the actual throughput that the | computer's network interface can squeeze through the | narrowest straw in your link to the server. That is | necessarily a touch lower than the lowest signaling rate | of whatever equipment is in-between. Internet connections | are sold by trumpeting signaling rates, but those are NOT | download nor upload speeds. Never confuse them, because | they are overly-optimistic estimates of your maximum | throughput (which is infeasible given most PHY and link- | layer frame designs.) | teaearlgraycold wrote: | Downloading 50GB Steam games in minutes so you can join | your friends without having everyone wait around. And, | most importantly, flexing on people with speed test | results :D | shjake wrote: | 1 Megabyte per second seems like extremely slow. You need | 6/7x more to stream 4k properly and downloading modern | games would take forever. If you have a couple of people | using it simultaneously even HD might not be great.. | gcheong wrote: | I think you want to be a bit ahead of where the | technology is now to have some room for future | possibilities and assuming you're pulling cable you might | as well pull the "biggest" one you can(i.e. fiber). To | give an analogy, we recently remodeled our kitchen, which | required a rewiring of the electrical given current | standards. That alone used up all the remaining circuits | of our 100 amp panel. But we have several gas appliances | that we eventually want to switch to electric heat-pump | technology (water heater, dryer, furnace) and an EV which | I'd like to have a level 2 charger for but that would | most likely mean a service upgrade to 200 amps. On the | flip-side, we have 1000Mbps; thinking about whether we | have enough bandwidth to do X isn't even a thing now. | zamnos wrote: | The Internet is a utility and flows like water, so in | this analogy, homes should have enough Internet to meet | their daily needs, but they don't need so much as to be a | factory. For a theoretical household of 4, 8 Mbit is way | too low, but it does say that 10 gigabit might be | excessive. The thing is though, that the analogy breaks | down when running fiber allows for future backend | upgrades and faster future speeds over copper. | maccard wrote: | 8Mbps is just about enough to stream netflix in hd. If | you have other household members doing anything else it's | inadequate. It's also borderline inadequate for any | online gaming whatsoever. | | Hitting network speed limits doesn't just cap you in | those scenarios, it degrades very badly very quickly. | tomnipotent wrote: | > It's also borderline inadequate for any online gaming | whatsoever. | | 8Mbps is more than enough for a few dozen people to play | any modern game on the same connection. | zamnos wrote: | Not if they're using GeForce NOW or any similar service. | One person needs 15 Mbit for 720p, never mind a few | dozen. | jvanderbot wrote: | In my experience, a big problem is upload, which is | sometimes as low as a tenth or hundredth the download. | That really hurts remote work. Another factor is that | high speed internet tends to have lower latency, because | I guess you just have to build our more infra. That helps | remote work and gaming. | maccard wrote: | My job is video game networking. The problem isn't steady | state usage, it's burst usage combined with other devices | on the network. 15kbps might be enough for 98% of use | cases but you occasionally need way more. | Johnny555 wrote: | >> "The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a New Deal | agency established in 1934, estimates that today a quarter of | rural Americans and a third on tribal lands do not have access | to broadband internet, defined as download speeds of at least | 25 megabytes a second. Fewer than 2 percent of urban dwellers | have this same problem." | | The current FCC broadband speed is 25 megabits/second, not | bytes. | itake wrote: | The alternative of what? Socialize and subsidize infrastructure | costs even more for rural dwellers so the city folks pay for | the $20k cable a single rural family requires? | jjj123 wrote: | Yes. | | Edit: to be less snarky, there are plenty of examples of | doing something inefficient for the benefit of society as a | whole. The New Deal and the ADA are two examples that come to | mind. | | Unfortunately, we don't do much of that anymore in the US. | analog31 wrote: | We could do better, but there are still some contemporary | examples. For instance it's costly to provide comprehensive | medical care in rural areas. One of the effective functions | of medicare / medicaid is to subsidize rural medical care. | itake wrote: | We should minimize our eco-footprint with high density | living, not subsidizing high environmental impact | lifestyles. | | How does the rural folk having high speed internet benefit | society? | gameman144 wrote: | > How does the rural folk having high speed internet | benefit society? | | How does an urban population having high speed internet | benefit society? Whatever your answer, that's the benefit | for rural folks too. | edmundsauto wrote: | One difference is that urban areas get that benefit with | lower cost due to the inherent scaling available in dense | population. The benefit might be the same _, the cost is | not. | | _ I'd argue the isolated benefit is the same, but the | network effect amplifies it. When a ton of people do | music together, it becomes part of the culture. That | effect is more difficult to scale in low density | populations, which means their rate of improvement is | probably lower. | gameman144 wrote: | > When a ton of people do music together, it becomes part | of the culture. | | I can't think of a better reason to subsidize the | additional cost for rural broadband: without it, there is | no nationally accessible "culture" that unifies us. | ThrowawayTestr wrote: | Someone's gotta grow the food. Our farmers deserve | Netflix. | scatters wrote: | Or perhaps they deserve to be treated like adults and | decide for themselves what infrastructure they want to | pay for. | elcritch wrote: | And eDoctor visits, farmer forums, IoT data services, | banking, accounting apps, etc | nibbleshifter wrote: | Enjoy starving to death then. | lmm wrote: | If farmers feel their lifestyle isn't good enough in | proportion to the work they do, they should raise the | prices of the food they sell, not get paid by the | backdoor through subsidies. | ghaff wrote: | Let's cut off their electricity and phone too and | forcibly relocate them. It's not like other countries | haven't done that in the past. /s | SamReidHughes wrote: | We can just make them pay for it instead of mooching off | everybody else. | [deleted] | oatmeal1 wrote: | Exactly. People in this thread are perfectly happy to | throw unknown heaps of other people's money at the | problem until it is solved. And it's not like the | government has a track record of efficiently spending | money in the first place. | scatters wrote: | When? I can't think of any examples of forced rural-urban | migration other than the Highland Clearances in the UK, | which isn't really comparable. | JaimeThompson wrote: | How do the food, livestock, minerals, and wood that grows | in rural areas benefit society? | compiler-guy wrote: | A great idea! A terrific plan like this needs a clever | name. | | We could call it the Great Leap Forward, or maybe the | Cultural Revolution. | scatters wrote: | Neither of those had anything to do with moving people | from the countryside into the cities, as far as I'm | aware. The Chinese Communist Party is still trying to | suppress rural-urban migration (e.g., via hukou). | ghaff wrote: | I agree with your basic point--and subsidies are a | complicated topic. Cities can't exist in isolation. | | That said, Starlink, and presumably competitors at some | point, does change the game. As does probably 5G and | successors. They don't replace last mile/last 10 mile wired | Internet for all cases but we do increasingly have viable | alternative for more rural locations. | | My brother's house had a 1Mb/s down ADSL wired connection | and he was the last house on the road that could get | "broadband" at all. With Starlink, he's able to work, | stream video, etc. which wouldn't have been possible | before. | bumby wrote: | It's also important to recognize companies like SpaceX | benefit heavily from socialized infrastructure. For | example, they lease a pad at Kennedy Space Center and use | DoD infrastructure at Vandenberg. | ghaff wrote: | While there's perhaps some excessive idolatry of SpaceX | and shade on ULA and NASA initiatives, I'm not sure that | subsidies--somewhat overt or otherwise--are necessarily a | bad thing. Certainly DARPA has a long history. | revelio wrote: | Strictly speaking, that's doing something inefficient for | the benefit of people living in rural areas, not society as | a whole. | CamperBob2 wrote: | Not knowing much about the REA, I doubt humanitarian | arguments were behind it. I imagine it was successfully | sold to Congress as a farm subsidy. Rural areas were | where the farms were, and farms needed electricity. | jjj123 wrote: | My point was that helping some minority often does help | society as a whole. | | The ADA, strictly speaking, only helps those with | disabilities. But guess what? Having people with | disabilities be able to access goods, services, and work | just like anyone else helps society as a whole. | revelio wrote: | I don't really expect a straight answer to this, because | the sort of people who loftily declare what is best for | society as a whole usually just get angry instead of | answering, but how do you justify the claim that this | helps society as a whole? The ADA helps the minority by | making the lives of the majority worse (higher costs, | taxes, more effort etc). Making that tradeoff might be a | highly moral position and justifiable on that basis | alone, _but_ there 's no way to justify it on the basis | of helping society as a whole. Society isn't a single | thing that can be said to be helped or hindered. It helps | a few people by hindering the many. It'd be better to | just admit that and then argue on moral grounds, like via | reference to religion. | bumby wrote: | Sometimes the benefit comes in the form of a stable | society. The idea that there is a clear a 1-to-1 | transactional benefit is myopic. | revelio wrote: | Are you saying farmers would revolt if their internet was | slow. | bumby wrote: | I'm saying society can only tolerate a certain amount of | inequality. | revelio wrote: | Society can clearly tolerate huge amounts of inequality | and has done in the past, far moreso than what we have | today (kings vs peasants). Also see my comment above for | my views on people who claim to speak for all of society. | bumby wrote: | I didn't claim society can't tolerate _any_ inequality. | There's an argument that feudal systems you mentioned are | now longer the norm because that inequality led to | alternate systems. | | Regarding your first response, you may want to visit the | HN guidelines regarding shallow dismissals. | Akronymus wrote: | With that same argumentation, it can be argued that | moving food from rural areas into cities is doing | something for the benefit of people living in cities, not | society as a whole. | | Also, internet and such for rural people benefits society | as a whole, indirectly. For example, better crop yields | (Through better access to information) and such. | | So, I think your argument is deeply flawed. | dazc wrote: | As a rural tax payer I'm paying for some city dwellers to sit | around all day doing nothing. | | All the benefits you enjoy as a result of living in a modern | society have been paid for by someone other than you. | hawski wrote: | Isn't farming (the thing that AFAIK keeps most rural | places, well, rural) subsidized in the USA to the similar | level that it is in EU? | michaelmrose wrote: | It's vastly more economical to build infrastructure for a | few million people spread over a metro rather than over a | state and cities are centers of commerce and industry. Not | only do cities more than pay for themselves universally | they also pay for nonproductive rural areas which are very | expensive to maintain and provided little revenue. | | Basically unless you grow food the city folks would be | economically better off if you didn't exist. Your world | view is exactly the opposite of reality. | smolder wrote: | Some of that is right, but believe it or not farmers also | need local services like health care workers, | tradespeople, some semblance of government, etc. | gameman144 wrote: | > Basically unless you grow food the city folks would be | economically better off if you didn't exist. | | "Basically, if we didn't need to eat, we'd be better off | of our digestive system didn't exist." | | What a hilariously strange world view. There are | comparative advantages for both urban and rural areas, | and both are vitally important. | | Urban areas optimize for concentration of labor. Rural | areas optimize for land-and-resource-dependent | operations. | | You won't build a successful large scale R&D lab in a | small farm town, but you _also_ won 't build a successful | mining operation in downtown LA. | | (Also as an addendum, there are _so many_ industries | dependent on land and resources other than just | agriculture). | michaelmrose wrote: | If you want to be mercenary about it farms already | require only a tiny fraction of the rural population to | run and will in the future require even fewer. We need | the land. Virtually all of the folks not so much. | gameman144 wrote: | This is absolutely true, and the required subsidies for | those places with mass exoduses will presumably drop over | time (though will like increase _per remaining person_ | for those few necessary remaining people). | ghaff wrote: | City dwellers also buy things manufactured in rural | areas. Most of them expect a nationwide transportation | network that isn't just interstate highways and gas | stations. In addition to food, there is all the resource | extraction that needs workers, who have families, and | need healthcare etc. Basically a lot of people living in | rural areas are either doing things that, in part, | support people who live in more urban areas or they're | supporting supporting those people. | | Cities eat up tax dollars too. Boston's Big Dig was | basically a $10 billion or so gift to Boston from, not | only Western Massachusetts taxpayers but the rest of the | country. (The Speaker of the House was from the Boston | area.) | lawrenceyan wrote: | Rural farm land and dense urban cities are equally | important. We're all fundamentally interconnected. | bojo wrote: | I wonder how cities would support themselves without rural | landmass? The benefit is two way, and a $20k price tag does | not capture it all all. | yamtaddle wrote: | Nobody wants to ban rural living, just stop subsidizing it, | or subsidize it less. I don't get why responses to these | suggestions are always framed this way: "but you need the | countryside!" Well, yes... and that's what _paying for | goods and services_ is for. | | If the situation were reversed, these kinds of defenses | would _not_ convince the people making them that rural | dwellers ought to subsidize urban living. | owisd wrote: | This argument only makes sense if you're only subsidising | consumption, but infrastructure increases the productive | capacity of the economy as a whole, so the government | gets a return on its subsidy in increased taxes. | zdragnar wrote: | So food prices skyrocket to make up for the lack of | subsidies, and everyone gets a food purchase subsidy to | make up for the high food prices since nobody wants | people starving in the streets. Heck, Minnesota just | became the fourth state to offer breakfast and lunch for | free to all students regardless of ability to pay. | | You can shuffle the board around however you want, but | the truth is that agriculture (and therefor rural life) | is going to be paid for one way or another. | gameman144 wrote: | Eh, we decided a while ago that certain things are worth | subsidizing if they benefit the country as a whole. | | Education, healthcare, transportation, retirement -- | these are all things where we _could_ say "People can | just pay for these things if they value them", but | instead we determined that some subsidies are good for | the country as a whole (we often even want _more_ | subsidies for some of these). | | Likewise, it's important to have a population that's | willing to live and work in rural industries that supply | big city centers. Subsidies to provide some of the | infrastructure that more dense areas have can help the | nation accomplish that needed population mix more easily. | justin66 wrote: | My great-grandfather, when he built his suburban house after | emigrating to the US from Scotland via Canada, included gas lines | in the walls for gaslights in spite of the easy availability of | electricity. Just in case. | simonh wrote: | "Communism is Soviet power plus electrification of the whole | country!" - V Lenin | | Russian Joke: "Consequently, Soviet power is communism minus | electrification, and electrification is communism minus Soviet | power." | robbywashere_ wrote: | Curious about how the blogs and aggregators of the yesteryear | referred to these proponents of this new technology, was it | A/C-bros or D/C-bros? | ithkuil wrote: | "Electricity will steal all your jobs! " | | "You don't need to worry about electricity, but about other | people knowing to harness electricity better than you!" | | Ridiculous and at the same time actually true. | notahacker wrote: | I'd say the opposite: electricity actually did see fantastical | predictions of automation ending work altogether which despite | it being an enormously useful enabling technology _still_ haven | 't come to pass, it enabled people to _get_ jobs more than it | cost them jobs | ithkuil wrote: | Your not saying the opposite of what I said :-) I literally | said that indeed electricity did cause many jobs to go away. | | My point was more about the way these predictions are phrased | and that they may sound absurd, regardless of how they would | pan out | notahacker wrote: | No, I'm saying electricity _didn 't_ "steal people's jobs" | even taking into account roles that ceased to exist | altogether, because it phased in slowly, created far more | jobs than it took away and people whose roles were | "replaced" by it simply adapted to different (usually | better) jobs, and the absurd predictions of the time were | all wrong not because of how they were phrased but because | as a simple matter of fact electricity neither heralded a | post-work utopia nor forced workers wages to stay at | subsistence level. | ithkuil wrote: | Ah I see what you mean. | | I don't think "stealing jobs" means that there will be | less jobs in absolute. It usually means (at least that's | how I usually see it used) that people who current have a | job and are trained to do that, will no longer be able to | do it, and switching to another job is not easy: it's not | just skills, but often also you need to relocate | somewhere else etc. | | The problems with coal miners losing their jobs is not | because we don't have other jobs available. It's that the | lives of those people will be upended and it's not | surprising that people resist that. | [deleted] | tgv wrote: | It did make many jobs and people redundant, though. But because | the world was growing, the economy grew with it and replaced | that with other jobs. If growth stagnates, there's no guarantee | for job replacement. | | And any parallel with AI/GPT is completely absurd, even though | it's the reason why this is upvoted. | dalbasal wrote: | >>If growth stagnates, there's no guarantee for job | replacement. | | No guarantees, but no hard rules euther. | | PCs are the ultimate clerical and administrative machines. | You don't need secretaries or typists. Don't need memos and | mailrooms. Stuff gets filed automatically. | | We put one on every desk. Typists and secretaries went away, | but administration went on a growth spurt. Whether it's | school admin, corporate HR or hospital billing.. | Administrative work became much more plentiful once PCs | proliferated. | | We write, more letters, file more forms, sign more | agreements. Maybe that stuff is valuable, and since we can do | more of it with computers, we do. Maybe it has nothing to do | with efficiency or value. | | Whatever the case, it demonstrates that the "progress Vs | luddites" debate can't be solved with a simple model. | | Absurdity assume a reasonable world. Sometimes the world is | weird. | ithkuil wrote: | Could be a case of Jevons paradox? | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox | | Sometimes when things look weird to us, it just means that | it's counterintuitive and necessarily irrational | ithkuil wrote: | The parallel may well be wrong, but I would go as far as | calling it absurd. | Vespasian wrote: | It's unfounded regardless of what you believe will happen. | | We are still months / years too early to see how | transformative exactly GPT based AI opportunities will be. | | We are clearly beyond the "Neat academic resarch" phase and | well into the product building phase of this new technology | but some things are only clear in hindsight. The spectrum | goes from "useful niche tools" to "industrial revolution" | and we must not forget that even very successful | technological breakthroughs are usually marketed way beyond | their actual capabilities. | | People in the second row who are now betting hard on AI may | as well be the billionaires of tomorrow or they will be | forgotten and swallowed up by confirmation bias. | api wrote: | It probably wasn't that useful on day one. Took a while to get a | lot of products out there that required electricity. | jonplackett wrote: | I mean, lighting was kind of a killer app | gpm wrote: | If I think of everything I use electricity for these days, | lighting* is pretty far down the list of usefulness. The sun | can fill 80% of my lighting needs, giving up on the 20% | really doesn't seem like it would be that painful. | | I actually thought the list of items in the ad in the article | was far more convincing than lighting as a use case. | | Today my list of more important use cases would include | things like long distance communication, refrigeration, | transportation*, cooking/manufacturing, computing, data | storage, small cameras, medical uses* _... | | _ except in so far as light is how I use electricity to make | light for information transfer purposes. Something like e-ink | would be an adequate substitute though. | | * ICE engines do fill a lot of this niche, but not all of it. | Subways, elevators, and the like are made much better via | electricity. | | ** Imaging devices especially come to mind | totoglazer wrote: | I think you massively underestimate how annoying not being | able to see after dark is. | kayodelycaon wrote: | Where do you live? For half the year, we have less than 12 | hours of sunlight. | | Prior to electricity, humanity has spent a lot of time and | effort to have light past sundown. | julienfr112 wrote: | and electric motors. | [deleted] | lbebber wrote: | We still refer to the electricity bill as the "light bill" in | Brazil. | Claude_Shannon wrote: | Same in Poland | martinjacobd wrote: | I'm an American, and this is what my mother calls it, | though I call it the electric bill. | Falkon1313 wrote: | And there were likely multiple competing and incompatible | formats in the early days. Utility is greatly reduced when some | of the stuff you want won't work with other stuff. | cfn wrote: | Yes, that I recall reading about, there were even competing | DC grids and AC grids. I think Edison's was DC. | samtho wrote: | Edison's was DC. He hated A/C and did public demonstrations | of killing animals with A/C just to "prove" how dangerous | it was. The Current Wars was a very interesting blip in | history, and ultimately Tesla and Westinghouse won with A/C | because of its ability travel over longer distances with | minimal loss, the fact that minor variations in frequency | can be used to determine current the load/demand ratio | (allowing power plants to respond to load changes), and | it's voltage can be easily stepped up or down by passive | devices (transformer). | slyall wrote: | FYI the author of the article is Rose Eveleth and she did the | excellent "Flash Forward" podcast. She's recently wound it up but | I'd recommend the old episodes (probably don't start with the | final season though). | | https://roseveleth.com/ | zabzonk wrote: | And one of the first things they did with it was use it as an | inefficient means of execution. | | Marvin the Paranoid Android: "Humans; you've just got to hate | them" | tecc501 wrote: | Crypto dudes be like "this proves that Web 3 ect ect ect" | k__ wrote: | It obviously doesn't prove anything. | | However: History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes | stackedinserter wrote: | Well, people have to be convinced of the usefulness of anything. | You can't just approach a person with "trust me, it's good for | you". | wincy wrote: | Fun fact, might be off on the details, but Triscuits were called | that because they were marketed as being cooked by "elecTric" | ovens which meant uniform heating and no burned Triscuits! | | Electric Biscuits! Try Triscuits! | | Edit: since people like my fun fact here's the Twitter thread | where a guy talks about it. | | https://twitter.com/sageboggs/status/1242968530250870786?s=4... | pmalynin wrote: | Neat, I guess similar to Panko? But that was more of a military | time necessity | QuercusMax wrote: | I assume that the tricuits were cooked by a fairly | conventional electric oven, not like panko, which was cooked | by putting electrodes into the dough. | NoZebra120vClip wrote: | "was"? Has something changed that they do not use this | process anymore? | torstenvl wrote: | Yes. They're done. | | Triscuits and panko both refer to the finished products. | For the set of all Triscuits, there does not exist any | element which will ever again be baked. Ditto for panko. | NoZebra120vClip wrote: | In English, we use the habitual aspect for things that | have been, and are still, done on a regular basis. If you | wish to speak about a currently-implemented process for | making food, for instance, you say "panko is baked by | passing an electrical current through it". | | If you have a small bag of panko on the counter, you may | point to it and say "an electrical current was passed | through this panko to bake it", but you could also | construct the former sentence and be completely correct. | But your use of the past tense in a general statement | about panko implies that it is no longer made by that | process, which leads those of us who speak English to | incorrect conclusions. This confusion can be further | compounded by the fact that we were discussing events of | many decades past, so Triscuits, for example, may no | longer be baked in electric ovens, although they | certainly could still be. | | https://twitter.com/sageboggs/status/1242968548949004288/ | pho... Thanks. | torstenvl wrote: | > _your use of the past tense in a general statement_ | | It wasn't my use or my statement. | | > _implies that it is no longer made by that process_ | | No. That's a possible interpretation, but it is by no | means implied. | | > _leads those of us who speak English to incorrect | conclusions_ | | I'm a native Standard American English speaker. I did not | jump to that conclusion. In Standard American English, | there is a specific construction for expressing that | idea: "panko, which _used to be_ cooked by putting | electrodes into the dough " | | That construction was not used here. | Izkata wrote: | > That construction was not used here. | | Except that is how "was" was used by the two people you | were responding to. | NoZebra120vClip wrote: | If you'll refresh your memory about the context of this | comment thread, you will see several posters using past- | tense to refer to historical situations and that is the | context into which you interjected your thing about | panko. _I_ assumed that you knew that panko had once been | made that way and was no longer. _Others_ may have | assumed that as well, given the established context and | the way you wrote the sentence. | | So I hope this clears it up for everyone. | | Thanks. | QuercusMax wrote: | I have no idea about how either triscuits or panko are | made nowadays. Thus, I referred to them in the past tense | talking about how they were made when they were | originally created. | sgustard wrote: | Heh, I always assumed Triscuit was named to be one better than | a Biscuit. Which itself is one better than the mythical | Uniscuit. | sircastor wrote: | I am now on a quest to create the long lost Uniscuit... | swimfar wrote: | Uniscuit would be bread. Biscuit translates to "twice cooked" | in French. This is similar to biscotti which translates to | the same thing in Italian. Fun fact that many French and | Italians don't even realize. | 1970-01-01 wrote: | "Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you | will have to ram it down their throats." | | Howard H. Aiken | pmarreck wrote: | Somehow this doesn't surprise me. | | And if I lived then, I'd be the crazy one talking about all the | possibilities while people look at me dumbfounded. Same as today. | >..< | comment_ran wrote: | "To the electron: May it never be of use to anyone" -- J.J. | Thompson | mkoubaa wrote: | Even a new consumer of heroin needs to be sold it the first time | GalenErso wrote: | Note to crypto bros: This doesn't apply to cryptocurrency or | blockchains. If cryptocurrency or blockchains could be more | useful for most people than what already exists (fiat currency, | traditional banks and payment systems), we would know it by now. | jdminhbg wrote: | _post from 1965_ | | Note to AI dorks: This doesn't apply to neural networks. If | neural nets could be more useful for most applications than | what already exists (expert systems, human intervention), we | would know it by now. | GalenErso wrote: | I stand by what I said. | k__ wrote: | Good that you are able to declare that unilaterally. | GalenErso wrote: | I had to get it out of the way because crypto bros rarely | miss a chance of interjecting their fad into any | conversation. | | I realize the irony of my comment. | | I embrace that irony. | spir wrote: | HN community member response: Given that Ethereum launched in | July 2015 and prior to that, no programmatic blockchain | existed, on what basis did you select your parameter of 7.75 | years as the amount of time necessary to elapse before we're | sure no valid at-scale use cases exist? | | Crypto bro response: loaning my USDC on Notional for a fixed | rate of 4.6% and then bridging it to Arbitrum Nova to then send | my friends and family interest-bearing US dollar payments for | zero transaction fees seems pretty f'ing useful to me. | | Degen response: lol ok bro gl with that | GalenErso wrote: | > loaning my USDC on Notional for a fixed rate of 4.6% and | then bridging it to Arbitrum Nova to then send my friends and | family interest-bearing US dollar payments for zero | transaction fees seems pretty f'ing useful to me. | | /r/ThatHappened. | | Nobody does that. | jondwillis wrote: | Funny enough, with the current financial meltdown, we might | find out very soon if BTC will live up to a large part of its | original intended purpose. | pclmulqdq wrote: | As long as BTC has tons of "price action," it can't live up | to the dream of a stable non-central-bank-backed currency. It | will continue to be a speculative asset. At this point, the | only actual "inflation hedge" in the cryptocurrency space | seems to be Monero. Everything else has "price action" like | levered NASDAQ. | jondwillis wrote: | I hear you and agree that it has always been speculative, | and has been trading in sympathy/speculative bubble with US | tech for quite some time. | | However, it did de-couple from the NASDAQ after the SVB | dust began to settle. | not_enoch_wise wrote: | Thankfully no one followed with the potentials risks and costs. | So a century later when the planet is baking & sinking, no one | could possibly imagine giving up the new "necessity." | | Thank you, marketing & public relations. | | Now to do it all again, with AI! | [deleted] | antoniuschan99 wrote: | This is classic Ted talk by Jeff Bezos is a good one that | references electricity if you haven't watched it before | | https://youtu.be/vMKNUylmanQ | ayewo wrote: | Never seen this one before. Thanks for linking to it! | fnord77 wrote: | People Had to Be Convinced of the Usefulness of Cars | | People Had to Be Convinced of the Usefulness of Computers | | People Had to Be Convinced of the Usefulness of the Internet | | People Had to Be Convinced of the Usefulness of LLMs | rzzzt wrote: | People Had to Be Convinced of the Usefulness of Flying Cars | | If they are not convinced, the thing doesn't happen? | robotbikes wrote: | Yeah it reminded me of a 1980s Saturday Morning Cartoon PSA I | saw as a kid evidently called the Computer Critters that ran on | ABC. Basically a bunch of attempts to convince people they | needed to get a computer at home. | https://youtube.com/watch?v=9rDIPyVqbHs | jstx1 wrote: | The thing that's missing from the list are the tools and | inventions which people had to be conviced of the usefulness of | and ended up being useless. | | "This happened for X so it will happen for Y" isn't an argument | on its own - you either need to make a connection between X and | Y, or say something fundamental about Y which makes the | statement true. | spir wrote: | People Had to Be Convinced of the Usefulness of Programmatic | Decentralized Public Chains (aka Crypto) | lgas wrote: | For the most part, they still do. | HervalFreire wrote: | Not all people. There is a division of people here. People able | to rationally see the consequences of a new technology. | | And people who have to bend their perception of reality to | protect a vested interest. For software engineers the skills | and attributes we take pride in are our software craft and our | intelligence. So it's normal to see that the attacks on AI are | especially vicious on HN. | | I'd say the division is about 50 50. | | Gpt4 will not replace us. But it's a herald for something that | will. That is reality. | geraneum wrote: | > But it's a herald for something that will. That is reality. | | This is mostly what the people who described as "rational" | say all the time, but there's no rationality or even a deep | conversation about what to do if this happens. I can flip a | coin and it will half of the times tell me that it's the end! | Both of this camps are arguing like political sides and the | conversation is usually a repeated instance of some beliefs | on both sides. | | I believe, instead, we can talk about the practical ways we | can deal with this change. For example we can start with | looking at what other fields that got automated did. Unions? | Regulations? Wild west? Free market capitalism? Monopolies? | What? Or we can discuss how to take advantage of this new | change. Just sayin... | HervalFreire wrote: | How can we talk about what you're suggesting when half of | the people don't even believe such a change will ever | happen? | geraneum wrote: | People who believe such a change will happen, are in the | position to lead the conversation in my opinion. This is | not the first impactful change in history. It's not even | clear if it's the biggest one and as any other change, | people who have a rational understanding of it are in a | better position to propose solutions to the problems it | brings. | | There is another problem though, which is very important | to note. As much as this change is impactful, there are | so much nonsense and bulsh*t going around it because some | people are financially invested. Sometimes people make | statements without revealing their true intentions. I | imagine, that a person who is right now, integrating | ChatGPT into something and dreaming about getting rich | fast, is not gonna believe into whatever cautionary tail | others tell. This specific aspect of the current hype, | unlike the actual product, is dramatically similar to the | crypto hype. It doesn't help either. | | Edit: fix typo | stocknoob wrote: | It's ok if people want to be behind the curve. No skin off my | back if they want to delay their personal use of a transformative | technology. Progress will happen with or without them. | Denvercoder9 wrote: | > the city of New York City now uses about 100,000 kilowatt-hours | per minute. | | Also known as 6 GW. | [deleted] | s0rce wrote: | kWh per time is a terrible unit and we should stop using it. | Also kilowatts hours isn't great either, although I guess its | convenient. | Syonyk wrote: | Why is it a terrible unit? And what would you replace it | with? | | It's reasonably human-scale, which is better than Joules... | | If you want to pick on a terrible unit, pick on BTU. | amelius wrote: | If you want human-scale, then use calories :) | s1artibartfast wrote: | >And what would you replace it with | | just plain old kW. kW * hr/ hr is just 1 kW. | | A kW is relatable. About the same as an electric kettle, | microwave oven, or 100 lightbulbs. | Ekaros wrote: | Watts are the right mental model. Your stuff use some | amount of power while running. Be it 50W for old | lightbulb, or 1kW for space heater. You run this stuff | for some amount during the day. Add all these up over a | day for a city and you get to some total of power. | Multiply it by hours and get to energy spend. | | And then you can even multiply the watt hours to get | costs. | post-it wrote: | People pay for electricity by the kWh, so kWh/minute is | easily mentally convertible to $/minute. Watts -> $/minute | requires multiple conversions. | Tepix wrote: | I pay my electricity once per months, not per minute. | akira2501 wrote: | "I went 50 miles an hour for 45 minutes." | | This conveys useful additional information. | quickthrower2 wrote: | Disagree. kWh is a unit most households would be familiar | with. I bet the average budget-conscious jo knows their price | per kWh and how many kWh a washing machine run would use up. | So for a lay audience it is a good term. | adrianmsmith wrote: | Honestly I reckon they went for the wrong unit with Watts. | Most things measure absolute values (e.g. miles) and then the | speed is the derivative unit (miles/hour). Whereas Watts they | went the other way. I reckon that's why everyone's confused | and people expect to see "I use this much [stuff] in total", | "this appliance uses this much [stuff per unit time] while | it's on", because that's the way every other unit works. | Denvercoder9 wrote: | The SI system has the Joule for that. The real "problem" is | that 1 Joule of energy is just too small to be practical in | most situations, so we often resort to larger units such as | a kWh (equal to 3.6 MJ). | kiernanmcgowan wrote: | Or, roughly 5x the amount of energy it takes to send a Delorian | through time | [deleted] | 0x0 wrote: | "...a brand new power generation facility that could generate | 770,000 kilowatt-hours" - what does this even mean? Did the | facility produce a certain amount of electricity and then it had | to be shut down, after it had produced 770MWh ? Can't produce any | more kWh so just fire everyone and demolish the facility? | teaearlgraycold wrote: | This is an interestingly common units issue. I can understand | confusing bits per second and bytes per second - most of the | time the capitalization of the units isn't important. But no | one confuses miles and miles per hour! | ulber wrote: | I bet they forgot to include that it can generate that 770MWh | every hour. | varenc wrote: | 770MWh every hour is just 770MW | | The hours cancel outs! | rzzzt wrote: | But then the next sentence goes like this: "For reference, | the city of New York City now uses about 100,000 kilowatt- | hours per minute." | | So... | varenc wrote: | And 100,000kWh / minute is just 6 gigawatts or 6,000,000 | kilowatts. Google is great at unit math like this: https: | //www.google.com/search?q=100000+kWh+%2F+1+minute+in+G... | | Journalist consistently use silly or incorrect units when | discussing power usage. At least for this article the | units aren't flat out wrong, just silly and I can see how | "kilowatt-hours per minute" could be a bit more intuitive | to readers. | | (And don't get me started on how USB battery | manufacturers advertise capacity in obtuse units like | 27000 mAh @ 3.7 volts instead of just using 99.9 watt- | hours or 27 amp-hours.) | stametseater wrote: | minutes and hours still cancel out, you just have to do a | little bit more arithmetic in the process. | rzzzt wrote: | I forgot for a moment where I was going with this, but | now back on track: if they wanted to make the two values | comparable, Edison's plant should also produce 770 MWh | every minute. | marcosdumay wrote: | > if they wanted to make the two values comparable | | When was the last time you saw a journalism piece try to | make units comparable? | | That number can mean absolutely anything, there is no | telling what the people could be thinking on the | telephone game from transcribing the source all the way | into a finished and edited design. | rzzzt wrote: | You are not wrong, and now I'm more confused. | Unfortunately the linked report 404s, but an old copy was | available through the Wayback Machine (it is exploring | market needs wrt. photovoltaic systems in NYC). The | introduction states that the city's total electrical | consumption in 2015 was 52836 GWh. | | Math time: (52836 x 1000 x 1000) / (365 x 24 x 60) = | 100525 kWh of energy consumed in a minute. So that checks | out. | | On the other end of the comparison, by the early 1900s AC | largely won and plants were appearing left and right like | flowers in a field. I can't find the exact station nor | its capabilities just by searching for the 1920 date. | | Edison's first commercial station in Pearl Street from | 1882 (still DC, I think) had 6 dynamos producing 100 kW | of power each: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Street_Station Which | is... let's see... 600 kWh every hour! :) Or 10 kWh per | minute. | | If the author suggests that Edison's plant produced an | amount of electricity that is enough to cater for present | day NYC's consumption a mere _seven times_ over, that | doesn 't seem quite right. 770000 kWh in an hour is 12833 | kWh per minute, in which case you need to build 10 | Edison-plants to match the demand. | | (I divided so many numbers in this comment, I sincerely | hope that I did them right) | varenc wrote: | I think the 2015 electric consumption was 10000x of what | the 600kW edison plant could generate? | | This is a great example of how things get simpler if we | drop the over time part of the units and simplify it to | just the average power draw. | | So in 2015 NYC consumed 52836 GWh. So the average power | draw is 52836 GWh / 365 days = 6031510 kW . As in, at any | given moment in 2015 NYC was on average pulling 6031510 | kW or 6.03 GW. | | The edison Pearl Street station could output 600kW. (and | that's the theoretical peak of all 6x dynamos, probably | less output in practice) | | 6031510 kW / 600 kW = 10052.5 so I think our current | consumption is about 10000x higher not 7x-10x higher than | the Pearl St station's output! | greesil wrote: | That's the joke | samtho wrote: | Usually electric generation facilities or devices are described | as what they can handle at their peak. I feel as if this | vulgarization of units really makes it harder to understand the | intangibility not of electrical demand which is also ephemeral | by nature. | | Most of the time we see "watts" it really means "watt hours" | which measures work. We're used flattening rate-measurements by | measuring instantaneous points like the speedometer on your | car, e.g. if you are going 60 miles-per-hour, you can expect to | travel 60 miles in on hour if you maintain that rate. However, | A 60 watt appliance will consume that 60 watts over 1 hour of | use, which is like saying we are going "60 miles" in the | example above. | 0x0 wrote: | What? No. A 60 watt appliance will consume 60 watts for | however long it is on. If it is on for 1 hour then it will | have consumed 60 watthours! | stametseater wrote: | Rightfully so. If you want people to get hyped about a thing, | explaining what the thing can do for them should be an obvious | necessity. But I guess that's an outdated mode of thinking, | modern advertising campaigns rely more on emotional manipulation | than a rational exposition of product features and benefits. | Instead of promoting electricity by showing people light bulbs | and electric appliances, I expect a modern advertiser would | instead tell you that popular people all like electricity and | that if you like electricity too, you might also become popular. | Instead of showing people electric lights, you could just show | some young attractive models having a picnicking in a lush city | park with a narrator saying something about 'trailblazers and | innovators', maybe referencing famous popular figures like Gandhi | for no apparent reason. | akira2501 wrote: | Demonstration > Explanation. | | If you can't do that for one reason or another, you use | Marketing. | williamtrask wrote: | There are plenty of products where people choose marketing | even though demo and explanation are possible. Most. | MikePlacid wrote: | > explaining what the thing can do for them should be an | obvious necessity. | | Obvious?? You are taking too much of American way of life and | values for granted. The Party can just order something | progressive and the people will jump with enthusiasm. You just | need to train them that not jumping with enthusiasm when the | Party orders something is dangerous for their career or, more | effectively - for their life. | | At the same 1920 time on our side of the ocean, the State Plan | of Electrification of Russia: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOELRO. | | Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole | country. | | -- Vladimir Lenin | | Works like a charm. The only drawback of this approach is that | you'll get not the American way of life but the Soviet way life | and the progressive will mean not what is really progressive, | but what the Party orders. But well, is it that important? | LBJsPNS wrote: | COMMIES!!! COMMIES EVERYWHERE!!! | | Seriously, is it 1953 where some of you live? | MikePlacid wrote: | My comment describes the presence and practices of | communists in Russia in 1920. | | If something after reading it makes you think that | communists are somewhere else - this "something" is not my | comment. I can only guess, but may be this "something" is | you own living experience. No? | Isamu wrote: | Early electric service was less reliable than gas. My house had | mixed gas lighting and electric, and there were even fixtures | that were both. Not sure how long this transitional period | lasted. | | Adoption of phone service was even slower. First and second | generation systems were pretty crappy by today's expectations. | analog31 wrote: | When I was in grad school, my cheap old rental house had light | fixtures that allowed you to choose between electric and gas in | one fixture. The gas pipe had long ago been disconnected, but | the electric bulb sockets were stamped "Edison Patent." | | What I imagine was that electric lighting could have started | out in commercial or municipal use, and spread out into the | general population as it got cheaper and more reliable. The | same thing happened with cell phones and the Internet. | Ekaros wrote: | Also think of process of wiring a house. And because you are | well enough to do it in first place having it done to look | nicely. I don't think that is exactly cheap process, back | then. It is still not. The amount of cabling even for basic | lights is not that small. | analog31 wrote: | Indeed, and it's something that greatly benefits from being | done before the house is finished. | | When I lived in Texas during a housing boom, we had an | electrician on call for our factory. He told me that he | would often stop at a construction site on his way home in | the evening, and quickly make some extra money by | completely wiring a house. | plaidfuji wrote: | I know the analogy of the day is AI, but I'll make the case for | cryptocurrency as the better analogy. I think everybody sees | potential use for AI - probably more than it can actually do. | | The technology that I hear being called "useless", "pure | speculative hype" etc is crypto and defi. Maybe today, because of | lack of infrastructure, network effects, productized apps, etc | it's not as useful as traditional banking and fiat currency, but | the reality is that there's a future where we don't need banks | and nationalized currencies, and that is an enormous value-add | for society as a whole. It may not happen today, 10 or even 100 | years from now, but we will look back and find the idea that | people had to be convinced of this absurd. | k__ wrote: | While I think that much of what crypto bros did is quite the | waste of time and money, I believe that it has potential to be | revolutionary. | | If something really different has to start these days, | centralized services are an easy target for the powers that be. | The only way to circumvent them are truly decentralised | systems. | himinlomax wrote: | Remind me of the saying: "They laughed at Galileo; but they | also laughed at Bozo the Clown." | | NFT/cryptos are the Bozo the Clown of technological | innovations. | pclmulqdq wrote: | The thing is - AI is a very apt analogy today. People outside | the tech sphere often think it's a toy, but don't see the real | productive uses of LLMs, for example. | | In contrast, today's version of crypto has had its popular | moment. Like the dirigible, it got a lot of mainstream coverage | as a "promising" "revolutionary" technology, and it has made | its millionaires and billionaires. Like the dirigible, it has | been found wanting. There is some chance that the future will | involve CBDCs, but I think most people agree that the ship has | sailed on the Bitcoin-Ethereum-NFT-based "metaverse" that | crypto entrepreneurs wanted to create. | peyton wrote: | There are billboards everywhere touting AI. My mom talks | about it. | pclmulqdq wrote: | I see you live in the San Francisco bay. If you go outside | that little bubble, you won't see very many billboards | advertising anything other than personal injury lawyers, | restaurants, and casinos. | jondwillis wrote: | A friend's sister came into town from Nashville, and I | had the pleasure of explaining what ChatGPT was to her. | localplume wrote: | [dead] | [deleted] | EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: | Crypto doesn't harm anyone who doesn't choose to buy into the | get rich quick schemes. If some people somewhere trade crypto | between them, it's none of your business. | | AI, on the other hand, harms millions of people right now - by | government surveillance, face recognition, spam bots and SEO, | deep fakes, exam cheating, job losses, killer drones etc., with | almost no upside for the little guy. | Tepix wrote: | It's the other way round: Crypto mining has wasted an awesome | amount of resources and is still ongoing despite energy | shortages, mass extinctions, air pollution from coal plants | and global warming. | KingLancelot wrote: | [dead] | skeltoac wrote: | Useful electricity was not born suddenly into a world that had | never heard of electricity. People had been playing with | electrical toys and scientific equipment for generations before | advances made industrial electricity possible. Electricity may | have earned any number of different cultural reputations for its | associations with aristocrats, magicians and quacks. | | Just yesterday I rewatched James Burke's Connections, episode 3, | Distant Voices, which vividly illustrates some of the ways people | tried using electricity. | PHPIsKing wrote: | [dead] | quietbritishjim wrote: | > In 1920, New York Edison built a brand new power generation | facility that could generate 770,000 kilowatt-hours. For | reference, the city of New York City now uses about 100,000 | kilowatt-hours per minute. | | There must be some units confusion here. Surely they didn't quote | the lifetime energy output of Edison's power plant? Maybe they | mean that could generate at a power of 770,000 kilowatts? But | then they say NYC consumes a power of 6,000,000 kilowatts, and it | seems unlike Edison's power plant was already running at more | than 10% of today's NYC needs. Maybe they meant 770,000 kilowatt- | hours per day (i.e. 32,000 kilowatts)? | tzm wrote: | Electric cars are also viewed this way. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-03-19 23:00 UTC)