I’ve tried several different audio solutions, including nice wired headphones + mod mic wireless. Ultimately people think I sound best just using my laptop’s internal microphone array and bookshelf speakers. The whole process was a frustrating distraction.
House Democrats just proposed $100B to fund last mile fiber. The bill includes thinks like a "Dig Once" provision and supersedes state laws against municipal fiber.
ugh, that bill is horrible. 0 talk of deregulating things which allow the ISP monopolies(which are responsible for the terrible service) to exist. Literally just another tax-payer handout to private companies.
Here in the US, AT+T was ordered to allow independent DSL operators to share its twisted pair to households. Worked okay for a while, but AT+T found ways to get the shared equipment e.g. at the local office, misconfigured for those customers. Source: I was such a one, with a year and a half of intermittent service.
My fear for open access is where the open market ISPs and the natural monopoly fiber demux meet -- we should fear attempts at collusion and market manipulation.
It was the 1996 telecom act and it was implemented poorly and the telcos made it super difficult to operate within.
Note that cable companies were exempt (which is because they had better politicians) and telcos had a lot of runway to put up barriers for a clec to provide services. In the end, the telcos moved the goal posts, could subsidize customer equipment better and could delay your installs.
This was always the plan. Pretend to follow and enforce UNE regulations for a few years, so that lots of investors would be fooled into thinking that competition could exist in USA telecom. Then after lots of infrastructure has been built out that the Daughters Bell would like to acquire for pennies on the dollar (to subsidize their simultaneous large investment on the wireless side), completely stop enforcing any UNE program. CLEC pitches to new customers: "If you sign up today, we'll be able to start your service in one to five months!" Poof, there goes the business. Now you have to sell all your customers, equipment, marketing, etc. to the same assholes who colluded with FCC to screw you over, at fire-sale prices. ILEC execs, bankers, and politicians got rich. Telecom investors learned they have to wire around anything that FCC/PUCs can reach. In dense locations that may be fiber. Everywhere else it will be higher-GHz-band wireless. Absorption will make anticonsumer regulation more obviously corrupt, and there will be only so much that FCC can do.
In general, this is how massive new laws in USA work. Lots of consumers/citizens/normal people are somewhat dissatisfied with the status quo, and so some public-interest people start pushing through a big change to benefit humanity at the slight expense of entrenched interests. Lobbyists for entrenched interests aren't stupid; they know you don't step in front of a speeding train. Instead, they flip all the right switches (i.e. they pay massive bribes) to direct the train along the tracks they prefer. "Oh, we're going to have competition in wired telecommunications, are we? Yes, let's pretend that, just for fun..."
heh I had this problem with the inane music my kids listen to. Those plays poisoned my recommendations and I only noticed when my annual retrospective playlist popped up full of disney garbage.
Solution: use separate streaming service for the kids! I still use Spotify for everything, but kids music happens on Amazon Music.
I can relate to that as well, 11pm sometimes feels like the right energy level to concentrate on that one task that you know needs about 3 hours with no distractions.
Or it’s because it’s politically popular to raise speed limits since they usually raise them to the speed that is almost, but still below, the speed that everybody is already driving at currently.
Also in the US the AAA heavily invests in lobbying for higher speed limits every year. The AAA isn't quite the villains in American politics that the NRA are (ETA: or at least, have become), but they are historically close. It's easy to forget that AAA was founded to fight speed limits in the first place.
I'll admit it is something of an uncharitable view. The given reason AAA was founded was to improve the "quality" of roads in the country. One of the qualities that was seen as lacking at the time was the inability to use anything close to the top speed of cars due to road hazards and pedestrians. It's related to why AAA was the first car racing body in the country, overseeing for instance early versions of the Indianapolis 500 (though it divested racing later on).
(ETA: The search term I was forgetting was "jaywalking", because AAA was instrumental in the creation of jaywalking as a crime, related to the goals of allowing faster car travel versus speed limits. https://www.salon.com/2015/08/20/the_secret_history_of_jaywa...)
This article spills a lot of ink to say that you should focus on your Sleep, Diet, Exercise, Stress, and Drugs in that order. It provides a few tips for each topic:
1) Sleep
Tip: "my biggest pro-tip [...] wake up every morning at the same time"
2) Diet
Tip: "Get your food allergens checked and make sure you’re not consuming foods that your allergic to on a regular basis (I used Everlywell.com for their at home food allergy test recently, and it was great)."
Tip: "Consuming multiple alcoholic drinks before bed can absolutely wreck your sleep, which is the first foundation to mental wealth."
3) Exercise
"I’m going to zero in on the anti-inflammatory effects of high intensity aerobic exercise 3 times a week (which incorporates improvement to mood, detoxification, and anti-inflammation). [...] this is all about using a stair-master or elliptical, cycling, or high intensity running for anywhere from 15-30 minutes, etc. 3x per week. Cycling has been shown to be superior to running for the aerobic effects, so I use our family’s Peloton for 20 min HIIT rides at least 3x a week, preferably more. [...] Try this for 4 weeks and see what it does for your mental health (and your sleep)."
4) Stress Management
Tip: "[find] time to sit quietly for 15 minutes in the morning, with your cup of coffee or tea in-hand, to do three primary things has been extremely helpful for me:
(i) Gratitude journaling of 5 things that I’m grateful for (nothing is too small here, from the sunrise to the laugh of my daughter will make the list),
(ii) 2-3 minutes of breathing exercises (google 4-7-8
breathing for a really simple breath work exercise),
(iii) Lastly, 5 minutes outline my to do list for the day."
5) Exogenous Compounds
Tip: "any of these, from the innocuous to the Schedule II prescription, should be last on the list of your personal “mental wealth” audit."
