
Why do I do this to myself? Bob's first predictions for 2018 – I, Cringely - rbanffy
https://www.cringely.com/2018/01/16/bobs-first-predictions-2018/
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hacknat
I think the death of net neutrality is an act of desperation (clearly someone
is behind it, because...why now, why the spam comments, why so fast, etc),
because cable was a medium of control, but broadband is a utility with little
opportunity for resource extraction. Here comes 5g and lots of wireless
bandwidth for even more price competition which will either put incredible
pressure on the ISPs to violate net neutrality to extract value or create a
proliferation of ISPs, ala the 90s that race to the bottom, some of whom will
offer net neutrality as a feature of their service. Curious to see how the
increase in bandwidth affects the market in the coming years. Wireless
presents all kinds of interesting possibilities.

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mcguire
" _All the mobile carriers will begin rolling-out 5G wireless networking in
2018, though only about 22 percent of the country will be covered by the end
of this year._ "

22% by population or by geographical area? (Yes, I think I'm funny.)

What exactly are the details of 5G? My understanding was of lots of short-
range, very smart antennas. Which would require some kind of backbone,
probably wireline, right? And which those of us who do not live in major
metropolitan areas probably shouldn't expect to see, ever.

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chrisbennet
I've wondered for years now, who is the woman in the image with Cringely?
Partner, coauthor, wife, daughter, model? (To be clear, I don't want someone
to DOX her, just curious as to her relationship to Cringely's web site.)

~~~
TeMPOraL
(In no way trying to impact the perception of submitted text - just honestly
asking for context.)

I have a better question - _who is Cringely_? It's the first time I hear of
him. Is he some SV celebrity?

~~~
irontoby
Short story: he was a big deal back in the day, has had a couple pretty big
stories but these days he's much less influential.

Now he blogs very infrequently, largely concentrating on his slightly-creepy
obsession with IBM. The fact that he so easily gets duped by scammers
pretending to be Google[1] and then actually blogs about it is quite
indicative of how far his finger is from the pulse of technology.

So, no, you're not missing anything.

[1] [https://www.cringely.com/2015/09/07/evil-google-waiting-
on-l...](https://www.cringely.com/2015/09/07/evil-google-waiting-on-line-one/)

~~~
mkstowegnv
His essays have been submitted 40 times as HN stories in the last two years
(most with more than one person submitting). I have gotten useful insights
from all that I have read. If you are going to be so dismissive you might at
least give us your recommendations for who has a better bird's eye view of
current technology.

~~~
ghaff
I think he's reasonable enough although he doesn't write a lot. The world has
changed to the degree that it's probably hard to point to a generalist weekly
writer who is the equivalent of the columnists at the old weekly computer
magazines. Today, you tend to get writers who are more specialized in AWS,
IoT, virtualization, cloud, or whatever. And most of them are consultants,
vendors, etc. rather than full-time journalists.

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mrfusion
What is buffer bloat and how do old routers contribute, how did new routers
fix it?

Also I didn’t realize broadcasters can sell their frequencies and it can be
used for non broadcasting uses such as data? Is that true?

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scardine
From wikipedia:

> Some communications equipment manufacturers designed unnecessarily large
> buffers into some of their network products. In such equipment, bufferbloat
> occurs when a network link becomes congested, causing packets to become
> queued for long periods in these oversized buffers. In a first-in first-out
> queuing system, overly large buffers result in longer queues and higher
> latency, and do not improve network throughput.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bufferbloat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bufferbloat)

~~~
tacon
Measure the bufferbloat in your connection:

[http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest](http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest)

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coldcode
Whatever ISPs will do with no more net neutrality (assuming its not overturned
by Congress) may affect the prediction about streaming. Guessing what this
will result in is impossible.

~~~
codingdave
Guessing the result should be informed by the cycles of regulation and
deregulation in the telecom industry as a whole. We have decades of history to
pull from, if anyone wants to take the trouble to learn the history and apply
it to the current scenario.

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tonyedgecombe
*Microsoft’s concentration is on: 1) Azure; 2) Azure services like storage and — to some extent — Office 365; 3) Microsoft Office, and: 4) Windows.

If something is your fourth priority it might as well not be on the list.

~~~
b3lvedere
I sure hope my government still adresses things after #3 on their to do lists.

~~~
thealfreds
Well certainly maintained.

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Cyberdog
> 5G is interesting because it will bring a huge increase in wireless
> bandwidth that we don’t really need.

640K of RAM…

~~~
jackhack
Correct. We (users) don't need that bandwidth. Advertisers and social media
companies who consume us and market us as a product to be sold needs that
bandwidth.

~~~
Spivak
Don't be such a cynic. If you think the differentiator between 1G broadband
and a 56k dial-up is ad bloat you're crazy. Significant bandwidth increases
enable applications that weren't possible before.

I want that bandwidth to do cool things. And there's nothing stopping you from
doing cool things with it either.

