You’re being a dick. All I did was share some info you might have found interesting. Fuck off.

You’ve missed the point.

The point is the useful trivia I just told you.

I have a garage that could hold 4 cars if you parked 2 rows of them…

My single income household of 3 is just barely above the national poverty level.

Would you mind posting your phone book

Did you know that before cellular phones were a thing, the phone company regularly sent out books with everyone’s name, phone number, and sometimes even their address in them?

You could even find such a book in public in these little things called “Phone booths”.

Sounds like a skill issue.

I’m just a dumb ol trucker with an Alabama public school education.

I managed to set it up with no issues.

And for the record, it doesn’t do “random” updates unless you tell it to.

So why were you updating anything that was working? Were you using cheap-ass crap that needed a cloud connection?

Don’t blame HA for your choice in gear.

Former trucker here.

I’ve been using home assistant for a year. No degree in software engineering here

Stupidly simply to set up.

It’s cute that you’re worried about me. But it’s still better than whatever else is currently available at my house. And it will always be better than anything using geostationary orbit.

I’d rather have fiber, too. But until it’s available here, this is the next best thing.

Physics says otherwise.

Geostationary orbit, which is where hughesnet satellites are, is approximately 22 THOUSAND miles away.

That’s a round trip of 44 thousand miles.

That’s a ping time of 236ms just for the satellite connection, before any other connections are added in.

That’s worse than my dialup latency was in the 90s

Meanwhile, my Starlink ping averages less than 40ms, because these satellites are MUCH MUCH closer.

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TIL 120 is 4 x 70…

Edit to add everything below this line

Downvotes for facts. I pay 120/mo. It’s either this, 3Mbps DSL, or T-Mobile home 5G that works when it feels like it.

How well does it work in proton?

And then they use that government to pick winners and losers rather than letting the market decide. And at that point, the economic system is no longer capitalism.

When government is capable of picking those winners and losers, government service becomes more attractive to capitalists than running an actual business.

Ever notice that, for all their bluster, it’s usually the big business types in government that push regulations in the name of protecting one thing or another? Kids, environment, jobs, etc…

Because it’s not really about helping those kids, or protecting the planet, or anything else. It’s about continuing the size and scope of government to make it harder for new competitors to enter the market and provide a service cheaper than the established players can.

Did you know that in many states in the US, if you have a kid, but don’t have a grid power connection to your local power provider, that you can be charged with child endangerment? Even if you have off-grid electrical power.

Your local power provider loves that. It’s basically illegal to not have their service, so they can charge you basically whatever they want. “What about the public service utility commissions?” What about them? They’re all corrupt AF, and worse, typically run by unelected bureaucrats.

Then, add in the localities where the the utility commissions are so corrupt that they allow those same power companies to charge you a fee if you do add your own power generation. Because remember, you still have to have their service. So if you add, say, solar panels, they levy additional fees on you to make up for lost revenue.

And we can’t even vote the fuckers out, because it’s mostly unelected bureaucrats, and even the few elected officials that exist are just completely bought and paid for by the very same utility company they’re supposed to regulate.

Fascism is fake capitalism, because the market is not deciding anything, government bureaucrats are.

Capitalism is when the market decides who “wins” and “loses” in the race for more money.

But when you add in government overreach and regulatory capture, it loses all semblance of capitalism.

Because I’m not an anarchist. There is a role for government in maintaining its monopoly on the use of force.

But nothing else.

Competition.

Without force, how can they stop a small player from offering a competitive option?

It’s odd that you think it’s fundamental to capitalism when it’s exactly the opposite. True capitalism is an unfettered marketplace.

What we have now is a system here the profits are private, but the losses are socialized.

You may think that’s an effect of capitalism, but it most definitely is not.

You are conflating a system of governance with a system of economics. And I get it, because in a controlled economy, the government is usually the one doing the controlling.

What we have is something in the middle, taking the worst aspects of truly free-market capitalism, and marrying it with the worst aspects of a controlled economy.

Our government the picks winners in this setup we have. Instead of letting the market decide.

Your issue is that you see all the things this half-breed, partially-socialist economy gives us, and you blame it on the market. But the market didn’t get us here.

History tells me what will happen if we finally give in, and give total control of the economy over to the politicians. And I do not want that for my children, or their children.

Not exactly. And larger companies simply CANT destroy competition without assistance from the government.

If you are free to choose what to buy, and who to buy it from, you can choose to buy from the startup. You can choose to buy from the guy running a business out of the back of his pickup. Or out of his garage. Or any number of options.

Problem is, right now we have our government enabling monopolies. Propping up failing, or non-profitable businesses by making it illegal to do business without spending millions or more on regulations that seem good on the surface, but when you start to dig into them, you see the vast majority of them were actually pushed by the big name businesses to stifle competition.

Our wallets should be the only regulation. Would you willingly buy products from a company that doesn’t respect the environment? No? Well guess what! That’s the power of the free market.

There’s, right now, a hybrid truck manufacturer in Canada that is staring down the barrel of excessive regulations that will limit their ability to build hybrid semi trucks.

How many other would-be entrepreneurs simply don’t even bother trying because there’s no way they can afford it?

How many small 1 to 2 person businesses would be in existence right now to compete with all these large companies?

But if history is any indicator, they will. “Too big to fail!”

What’s crazy is, people will say “See how capitalism fails us?” when that is socialized capitalism. The government should not be bailing out any companies. If they can’t survive without government money, they don’t need to exist.

This is a mute switch for me.