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Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying

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161–170 of 433 posts

Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying

#161
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at best it's just... faster internet Counterpoint: streaming audio and video were singularly enabled by faster internet. That is restructuring multibillion-dollar industries. The iPhone, one could argue, and through it real-time social media, are products of mobile internet. There are legitimate new capabilities that will likely erupt from cheaper, faster mobile internet. If the playground is in Shenzhen versus Sil…

Funny how people even on a tech website seems to be stuck at "640 KB is enough for everyone". When technology gets a lot cheaper, a lot more powerful, a lot less power consuming, the magic of the market creates completely new categories of use that unlock new demand at consumers. Right now your phone has a sim-card. There might be one in your tablet or your car too. But there is not one in your TV or the lights in yo…

> Right now your phone has a sim-card. [...] But there is not one in your TV or the lights in your bathroom. But at some point telecommunications technology is going to be so cheap that drawing a wire to connect a button to a light is going to be the expensive option.

You don't need a SIM card or 5G for that. Technologies like 802.15.4, or even simpler, are more than enough.

Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying

#162
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how people even on a tech website seems to be stuck at "640 KB is enough for everyone". When technology gets a lot cheaper, a lot more powerful, a lot less power consuming, the magic of the market creates completely new categories of use that unlock new demand at consumers. Right now your phone has a sim-card. There might be one in your tablet or your car too. But there is not one in your TV or the lights in yo…

Obviously sentiments like "640 KB is enough for everyone" hilariously failed to predict the value of faster and more powerful computers. At the same time, most people's personal use of computers hasn't kept up with the capabilities of the high-end of consumer grade products. Lots of people only really use a web browser, and even an ad-infested website will run fine on most 10-20 year old computers. You can say "we do…

> You can say "we don't need to frantically rush to deploy 5G" without also saying "nobody will ever benefit from 5G".

Sure. But that just means that the products exploiting this technology won't be developed in your neighbourhood but instead in Korea or China.

Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying

#163
post #4

I remember the abundant “cell phones cause cancer” and “WiFi is like a microwave” scares 20 years ago, they all ended when people got their hands on nice and shiny touchscreen smartphones.

People notice short term tangible benefits. We're not maximally rational actors. People follow the group, authority figures, the status quo, and fear what they don't understand. A Facebook post is read much more than a 30 page peer reviewed statistical study.

What is a statisical study?

Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying

#164
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how people even on a tech website seems to be stuck at "640 KB is enough for everyone". When technology gets a lot cheaper, a lot more powerful, a lot less power consuming, the magic of the market creates completely new categories of use that unlock new demand at consumers. Right now your phone has a sim-card. There might be one in your tablet or your car too. But there is not one in your TV or the lights in yo…

> drawing a wire to connect a button to a light How are you getting power to the light?

Being able to mount buttons anywhere is nice, and Philips even has a switch that works without batteries (the power for the Zigbee radio comes from the button press). Sending a signal over 5G to the internet and back however sounds like peak inefficiency for two devices in the same room that could choose any local wireless protocol

Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying

#165
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a shame that so much activism is spent on nonsense and even outright destructive nonsense. All that energy could be going toward improving things that matter. Of course I think maybe what we are seeing is the activist arm of what I've heard called "conspiritainment." It's a way for people to LARP as activists at no real inconvenience to themselves. They get to feel self righteous at no real cost. It also feels a…

What you say is logically valid, why are you being downvoted?

> It's a shame that so much activism is spent on nonsense and even outright destructive nonsense. All that energy could be going toward improving things that matter.

I did not vote on it, but this is obvious pablem. An analysis of "why" is an interesting question, but aiming for platitudes repeated throughout every age in every society, is the epitome of discussion "noise".

Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying

#166
post #33

There's such weird marketing zealotry behind 5G. They're acting like it's going to completely reshape society, but at best it's just... faster internet. In places where the internet is already pretty fast. I can only assume it's a mixture of political and economic stakeholders that have their own reasons for really wanting it to succeed (looking competitive against China, selling new phones, etc.)

It’s basically a bunch of glorified WiFi hotspots.

Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying

#167
One of the most important points that is missed about 5g is what 4G did for us. It's pretty clear that the widespread adoption of faster mobile technologies has enabled technology companies like Facebook, Google, Youtube, Netflix etc to thrive. Investment in infrastructure has unforseen benefits that only seem obvious in hindsight.

What will 5G bring us? Who knows. But if the past is any indication, it will benefit American companies if we invest in it. If not, all of that growth will go to China instead.

Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying

#168
post #33

There's such weird marketing zealotry behind 5G. They're acting like it's going to completely reshape society, but at best it's just... faster internet. In places where the internet is already pretty fast. I can only assume it's a mixture of political and economic stakeholders that have their own reasons for really wanting it to succeed (looking competitive against China, selling new phones, etc.)

> at best it's just... faster internet Counterpoint: streaming audio and video were singularly enabled by faster internet. That is restructuring multibillion-dollar industries. The iPhone, one could argue, and through it real-time social media, are products of mobile internet. There are legitimate new capabilities that will likely erupt from cheaper, faster mobile internet. If the playground is in Shenzhen versus Sil…

It's pretty clear that the widespread adoption of faster mobile technologies has enabled technology companies like Facebook, Google, Youtube, Netflix etc to thrive. Investment in infrastructure has unforseen benefits that only seem obvious in hindsight. America basically "owned" the 4G world and reaped the benefits.

Not doing this for 5G will basically just hand hundreds of billions of dollars in jobs and growth to China.

Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at best it's just... faster internet Counterpoint: streaming audio and video were singularly enabled by faster internet. That is restructuring multibillion-dollar industries. The iPhone, one could argue, and through it real-time social media, are products of mobile internet. There are legitimate new capabilities that will likely erupt from cheaper, faster mobile internet. If the playground is in Shenzhen versus Sil…

Streaming pre-recorded video (e.g. movies) over the radio is wildly inefficient considering flash memory costs peanuts. The primary reason it's done is because we're in desperate need of copyright reform (streaming is being used by the video industry as a form of DRM.)

That's not true though. It's not like the people who currently spend lots of time watching niche videos on YouTube (myself included) would start ordering flash memory with those videos instead if only it wasn't for copyright. The case for movies is a bit stronger, but my family's movie/TV show routine is to figure out what we want to watch last minute, then find that on netflix or crunchyroll or piracy sites and then stream it.

I also think the current copyright system is insane, but streaming genuinely is more convenient than buying physical media. If anything, DRM makes media available through streaming _less_ convenient.

Re: Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have heard wrong - it's amusing that you're so confident in its failure despite having the wrong information. There are two phases in the 5G NR standard. The first phase relies on some elements of the LTE control plane to coordinate data services. These data services use new numerologies for their OFDM modulation, vastly more flexible resource block, allocation, improved error control coding, lower maximum latenc…

"New numerologies"? This is supposed to inspire me with confidence?

"In the context of 3GPP 5G standardization contributions, the term numerology refers to the configuration of waveform parameters, and different numerologies are considered as OFDM-based sub-frames having different parameters such as subcarrier spacing/symbol time, CP size, etc." (source: https://red-colmena.com/f/JyY1ajY1JmhhZSFpdC91JGcmIyEsYGU/18... which I found with a quick web search for "OFDM numerology")
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