I worked tech support for a software company. In the summers things were slow and they allowed a little leeway for working on personal enrichment projects.

I was aware of a room near IT that was filled with outdated computers and hardware. I asked if I could play with them. A few 100 hour weeks later and a coworker and I held a demonstration for IT and management. We proposed using all the old hardware as PXE boot thin clients (1GB RAM + Small HD + PXE NIC) using a modified Debian that would run all the tech support agent software via Citrix. It went off without a hitch in the demo setup.

Management loved it as they could see the cost savings. IT loved it as they’d get another ProLiant Server to house the Citrix and VMWare tooling. It also meant significantly less time dealing with Windows issues on all the agent machines. Ended up rolling it out to 50 agents that year and it was a success. They eventually moved to HP Thin clients, which built on the original idea.

For a lowly tier 2 tech support agent with a passing knowledge of linux, it was a proud achievement and got me noticed in the company.

Project 2.0 was an Asterix box. We were spending a ridiculous amount of money on international calls. Was able to route all the international calls in the office with logic routing on the primary Tadiran PBX (which ran OS2/Warp…lol) to a little Dell workstation with a Digium telephony card and FreePBX. Costing actual pennies on the dollar. It was like magic!

Linux was the wild west back then.

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It will likely take awhile for this to have any effect. I know at least in my state (ME) the utility needs to give a 30 day notice of rate hike and then that needs to then go to committee within public utility commission, who will basically arbitrate the request for increase.

Consequently, my supplier of electricity is a wholly owned Canadian company…so they’d actually be paying the increase until a rate hike was approved. Also, would a punitive rate hike even be approved?

They have enough trouble getting a 1% rate hike though for building infrastructure.

Edit: Although I’m not up to speed on if the affected states have set rates or variable rates.

What if we built a system of beacon transmitters that sent out pulses and then used recievers that would compare arrival times of those pulses to make a measurement, thus establishing positional location?

We could call it the Long Range something or other. I’m open to suggestions. Need a catchy name!

I joined the Starlink beta as soon as it was offered in my area, only having access to spotty 4G previously. My census block ended up being awarded to Starlink via the infrastructure act. Thankfully there was a rule change and they removed that contract money from Starlink and awarded it to two different fiber providers.

Work got started last fall…

I now have redundant dual fiber connections going into my house, a 2.5GB/2.5GB and a 1GB/1GB backup. With the first year pricing it costs about the same as Starlink. This is in the middle of nowhere, rural America. I’m told that there is tons of capacity too and they’ll be able to increase the speeds of those offerings in the future, as the price for the technology comes down.

It has changed the entire calculus for living and working in this area and becomes a lot more attractive for remote work.

Sucks for all the people that could possibly have amazing internet getting screwed over by this grift. Starlink is a great bandaid, but not a long term solution.

Also pro democracy US citizen.

I live in the only part of the lower 48 that is not directly connected to the American electric grid. Northern Maine gets 100% of its power routed through Canada, with the majority coming from Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station in New Brunswick.

If Canada stopped providing electricity, there will be 70,000 people without power in the middle of winter with no recourse.

A majority of my neighbors voted for Trump. FAFO.