qjkxbmwvz

joined 2 years ago
[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

That's...not really a cogent argument.

Satellites connect to ground using radio/microwave (or even laser), all of which are electromagnetic radiation and travel at the speed of light (in vacuum).

Light in a fiber travels much more slowly than in vacuum


light in fiber travels at around 67% the speed of light in vacuum (depends on the fiber). In contrast, signals through cat7 twisted pair (Ethernet) can be north of 75%, and coaxial cable can be north of 80% (even higher for air dielectric). Note that these are all carrying electromagnetic waves, they're just a) not in free space and b) generally not optical frequency, so we don't call them light, but they are still governed by the same equations and limitations.

If you want to get signals from point A to point B fastest (lowest latency), you don't use fiber, you probably use microwaves: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/private-microwave-networks-financial-hft/

Finally, the reason fiber is so good is complicated, but has to do with the fact that "physics bandwidth" tends to care about fractional bandwidth ("delta frequency divided by frequency"), whereas "information bandwidth" cares about absolute bandwidth ("delta frequency"), all else being equal (looking at you, SNR). Fiber uses optical frequencies, which can be hundreds of THz


so a tiny fractional bandwidth is a huge absolute bandwidth.

[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 5 points 1 year ago

80% of the USA lives within urban areas (source). Urban "fiberization" is absolutely within reach.

Agree that running fiber out to very remote areas is tricky, but even then it's probably not prohibitive for all but the most remote locations.

[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

So the irony is

I see what you did there...

[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think you mean more scrupulous, not less.

[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Hopefully you can publish in an open-access journal


if not it would be great if you could share an arXiv preprint :)

[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's nerf ~~or~~ and nuttin'

FTFY

[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 4 points 1 year ago

It is really powerful per watt, and has a built-in UPS. Any homelab type things you could do with that? macOS+homebrew will give you a nice *NIX feel, very familiar if you're a Linux user.

I'm a fan of having a remote homelab computer+disk for off-site storage. This would be a good candidate in that it wouldn't use excessive power at a friend/family's place, but may be overkill (I use a pi3 for that).

[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 156 points 1 year ago (20 children)

Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.


Richard P. Feynman

I think the same is true for a lot of folks and self hosting. Sure, having data in our own hands is great, and yes avoiding vendor lock-in is nice. But at the end of the day, it's nice to have computers seem "fun" again.

At least, that's my perspective.

[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Hobby 1: Ballroom dancing

No I'm pretty sure Strictly Ballroom is a completely accurate portrayal of ballroom dancing.

[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 4 points 1 year ago

Whatever you decide for your laptop, I'm a proponent of a barebones off-site setup if you're trying for 3-2-1 backup or similar.

I use a raspberry pi 3 with a single HD (ZFS) retaining some number of daily/weekly/monthly snapshots. Daily rsync, everything over WireGuard+VPS (TailScale would work too).

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