1.58 is still more than 1 in general unless the parameters are corelated. At 1 bit it seems unlikely that you could pack/unpack independent parameters reliably without additional data.
Not sure it was that insane. The author quotes a cost of over $30,000 to build a half-mile drop. I find that an insane amount of money that a government would pay to connect just one subscriber.
At $80/month breakeven is 30 years out. Assuming no recurring costs. But there's probably positive externalities like increased property values, businesses started, remote work bringing in dollars for the local economy. It could even have positive ROI for the state if it increased tax revenue, or at least help defray the cost.
It's not crazy, but it's longer time horizons than a business would ever care about.
>The author quotes a cost of over $30,000 to build a half-mile drop. I find that an insane amount of money that a government would pay to connect just one subscriber.
That's not much different than what it costs to connect them to power grid or the water and sewage system.
It also perverts incentives such that no utility will communicate perhaps helpful information to other utilities or government when said information can leave them liable for fines.
Until there's some kind of hold-harmless agreement, the various industry & government security information sharing groups can only be of limited effectiveness.
The management at the utility doesn’t want to be recognized for being a deficient operator that doesn’t meet standards, so they hire employees to ensure they are compliant
A fine is a black eye for a utility where people pride themselves on the reliability of the service they provide
They’re less than $1 on AliExpress and $4 on Amazon. Do you really want to spend time optimizing for something cheaper just because you don’t want to waste some MIPS?
The cost of buying an off the shelf GPS module to replace the original is so high that any price difference in microcontrollers or even an SoC is negligible. You could drop an entire raspberry pi in there and still be saving money.
There’s also the fact that I have RP2040-Zeros ready to use in a drawer. They’re so convenient, tiny, cheap, still lots of pins, always enough performance, easy to program with just a USB cable. Any other MCU, and I’d have add power regulator, caps, coils and a USB connector. Add the cost of shipping from Mouser/Digikey (at least $5) or LCSC (long wait time) and it only makes sense for high volumes. IOW: never.
A nice Symmetricom or ptf unit is going to offer much better time accuracy and holdover accuracy than those cheap units from China. The really cheap ones have no OCXO so time will drift fast during GPS outage. You get even better holdover accuracy with Rubidium but that's really only worth it if you need a real ref clock for test equipment. Expect to pay at least $500 for a cheap unit with an OCXO.
Obviously most people need no holdover accuracy so a cheap unit is fine. Most people aren't running data centers in places where GPS jamming is expected. Although it's not uncommon for truckers to be running GPS jammers that can inadvertently knock out a whole sea port.
I have a very lovely Symmetricom in my rack that has a busted GPS receiver but still provides NTP and IRIG-B using a Rubidium source as it's 10MHz reference.
I’ve seen them for $80 on eBay, and you could build something like that yourself with a $25 thin client[0] and a USB GPS dongle. But I doubt you’d have the local oscillator for hold over, you wouldn’t have the 10MHz and 1PPS inputs and outputs, and let’s not forget the lack of a cool looking case with VFD. :-)
I have no need for an NTP server, this was just a fun deep dive into something I found at the electronics flea market. But there must be reasons why these things still go for much more than $80 on eBay after they’ve been upgraded with a new GPS module.
Even the most basic Symmetricom (microchip now?) and ptf units have all the options you need to survive an outage and configure the thing anyway you want. I've got a busted Symmetricom that won't see anything in the sky but still provides NTP and IRIG-B using a calibrated Rubidium source for its reference clock. I don't need the time to be accurate but I need it to be precise.
Before we tackle the hard problem outlined above, let's solve the easy problem of pedestrians (bikers, scooters, skateboarders, etc.) traveling on highways and crossing traffic in undesignated places. I can't tell you how many times I've had pedestrians impatiently run across the roadway in front of my car.
I'm not sure one problem is easier to fix than the other. They both seem to come from people acting irresponsibly to arrive earlier at their destination, probably combined with an infrastructure to nudge towards that behaviour.
Changing behaviour with a penalty isn't terribly effective unless enforced in such a way that it is incredibly privacy-invasive, more effective is changing the layout of the streets. But I wouldn't be sure that that is easier to fix on the pedestrian side than on the vehicle side.
Let me understand this. Are you suggesting adding yet another inefficient layer of government in sparsely populated areas?
BTW, in at least some states there are intermediate subdivisions of government, e.g. townships and districts, which take care of the roads even in rural areas.
Yes. This is what most—all?—other democracies do. More realistically though, municipality level governments include surrounding rural areas. In areas with small towns and large areas of rural farmlands, the farmers and town residents have equal representation, but the farmers obviously have a bigger political influence (hopefully the municipality governments have enough representatives though that the townfolks have at least a couple of representatives).
In reality unincorporated America also includes heavily urbanized areas (more often than not poorer than the surrounding areas). Here in Seattle this includes Skyway and White Center. But even if aside from those it is pretty unacceptable that all local planning for the community of e.g. Fairwood, or even Hobart don’t have any say in their municipality level organization, instead relying on the same county council as Seattle for their local affairs (a council with only 9 representatives for a total of 2.2 million constituents).
Stroads never make sense, even with zero pedestrian traffic. They have way too many ingress and egress points, so they are wide, attempting to be fast, yet ultimately a significant crash risk, because there's a way in, or out, or something, ever quarter mile at the most. Tiny strip mall with 4 stores! A funeral parlor! A bank! a subdivision hidden somewhere? Sometimes, even straight out houses. All at 90 degree angles, where some traffic is doing 40, and there's no traffic lights in most of said interscetions.
Even banning pedestrians, we'd be far better off with fewer ingress points to fast roads that now need fewer lanes, and then the few intersections/roundabouts give access to side roads that are rated far, far slower, and have access to those store parking lots. The traffic that is going far is then detached from the one that is going close, the road gets faster, and the street is safer from fender benders. The diminished places where people stop fast and go will also lower stress on the physical road itself, leading to less places needing repairs very often, as the typical stroad turning lane does.
Let's just barricade up the streets. No traffic = no traffic accidents. This is what's been happening in Chicago with all the island, speed humps, etc. Reducing traffic to a safe crawl.
The problem with those devices is that they slow down traffic even when there are no pedestrians around and the streets could be used to reduce congestion on the roads.
I wonder what effect slowing traffic down to a crawl has on overall emissions. I'm guessing not good. I bet speeders are overall more efficient than crawlers.
> Let's just barricade up the streets. No traffic = no traffic accidents.
That’s what my home city did – Ljubljana. Over the past few decades the downtown area has become an almost square mile sized pedestrian zone. It has been wonderful. The area is completely revitalized, shops are booming, tourism is booming, entertainment industry is booming, everything is booming.
All because they kicked out the cars.
Here’s a video and a photo from my recent trip back. It made me realize how dead San Francisco feels in comparison even with 3x the population because everything is just roads with nowhere for people to hang.
For everything else, have you ever thought about the effects of higher speed traffic on residents? I'm guessing you haven't cause "screw those people".
I grew up in a neighborhood that had no outlets. Very, very safe place to play as a kid. We’d be in the street all day long, riding, walking, playing.
I returned recently, and the atmosphere is completely different, because now the streets have been extended. Through traffic completely changed the dynamics.
