The more salient point is that you might know the limitations of the tool, I might know the limitations of the tool, but millions of people who don't are using it for things it has known limitations for, because the marketing blitz that sits atop this glosses over those limitations.
Isn't this the whole point of Thread? You have a low power mesh network for inside a deployment (house, office, factory, whatever) and it's the border router which does the "communicate with the internet/lan/wider network" piece. These are typically plugged in (so no worries about having to be low power) have plenty of memory (so no worries about having to drop established routes like a router).
And if you don't want to buy an air compressor, an electric computer duster saves you money in the medium and long term. I haven't bought a can of compressed air in years.
You get those meetings at Meta as well ... because there are re-orgs multiple times a year and so the org leadership is sent to sell their teams on how this is now the perfect org structure. Until the next one, of course.
There's a famous poster from the Facebook days - don't mistake motion for progress. I always thought they should make one for re-orgs.
Even the way they want to go public, as a Public Benefit Corporation, calls into question whether the board then would allow Musk to take a controlling stake.
For electric and gas that works as it's all just accounting. Energy company A buys futures for has and electricity and it all gets provided via the grid.
For trains it's much harder - yes, there are two providers on the WCML, but they're not equal (one runs faster trains) and as such there's zero real competition.
These things are a choice though. The natural monopoly isn't the trains, it's the tracks. And it's not maintenance of the tracks, it's ownership of them.
So you have the government own the tracks, contract with a private company to maintain them. Then anyone can use the tracks, like anyone can use the roads. Private companies offer train service to the public. All they need is rolling stock and they can start selling tickets. You then get a market that looks like airlines, i.e. entering the market is a moderate investment (millions; buy rolling stock/planes) rather than needing billions to build the network itself. More popular routes get more suppliers, which turns into more frequent service. There is plenty of competition because rolling stock is mobile and can easily be reassigned according to customer demand.
Open access rail operators are not permitted to compete with franchisees (on the same routes/proposition) - there's a test that is applied before granting a license to ensure that the services will be "not primarily abstractive" - that is, that the operator will generate new revenue rather than simply taking away from the franchisee.
The one privatisation I believe the UK got right was British Telecom.
We now have a strongly regulated infrastructure side called OpenReach - the price they can charge for last mile connectivity is limited, and as such we have a load of different ISP's which either compete on tech and service (AAISP, Zen) or cost (PlusNet et al).
And then a proliferation of alternative last mile providers has also occurred - I now have the option of 900/100 FTTP from OpenReach based suppliers, 1130/104 DOCSIS from Virgin Media and 900/900 FTTP from CityFibre based suppliers.
This is partly because the _early_ days of private BT were so bad that they really had to regulate, hard. Openreach didn’t come into existence for more than 20 years after the privatisation of BT, and it happened because the state required it to happen.
It is one of those rare cases where Government actually knows where the monopoly could get into and formed OpenReach. Probably worth a submission on its own [1] but UK is slowly and surely getting all the FTTP roll out.
Hopefully there will be enough push to get 1Gbps Connection to every home rather than settled on 30Mbps.
[1] EXCLUSIVE: January 2025 update on broadband availability across the UK, nations and regions
Yes - and states actually control much of the curriculum.
However, the DOE does things like make sure there is funding for children with additional needs, which lets be honest, are not going to be replicated in certain states if the DOE is indeed disbanded.
Hoping that the ID.1 will be half as good, if it ever sees the light of day.
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