Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised • Hacker News Board

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#331

Post by ehnto » Wed, Mar 07, 2018, 3:24 PM UTC

twelve40 wrote: post #48

ehnto wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is probably a place in the world for both, but I would rather smaller, competitive companies, over encumbent monopolies and aggressive investment strategies (build a moat with money and watch everything else fail).

Puzzled why it came across as big vs small cos. Who's been the smaller competitive company out of Europe to take on incumbents? Skype? Dailymotion? Spotify? Blablacar? Seznam.cz? That's... it? Seems a bit underwhelming for 1/2 billion highly educated rich people with fast internet, no?

I just don't think it matters much that the rest of the world doesn't have massive, unicorn tech companies. I don't believe they are the unwavering innovators we make them out to be. They are amazing in their space, sure, but most tech companies aren't actually that big economically speaking.

Silicon Valley has been a playground for venture capitalists and their beneficiaries but I would wager that their influence, while wildly public and social, is only important inside it's bubble, and much of that influence has been frivolous, bought or self inflated. Does anyone really need Facebook or Twitter, or Hootsuite or Gmail? They have only existed for circa ten years each.

So I don't believe it's the beacon of social benefit or industrial power. It is certainly a beacon of wild capitalism, excitement and glamour. Whether that's a good thing or not is hotly debated, but a world without SV unicorns would move on just fine.

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#332

Post by theptip » Wed, Mar 07, 2018, 6:04 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #330

theptip wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes that the marginal utility of more bandwidth doesn't decrease; personally I'd rather have 10Mb all the time, than an average of 10Mb that is sometimes 1Gb and sometimes 0.1Mb. If you can't stream Netflix when it's raining heavily outside, that's a big problem.

I don't think that's the right way to look at the problem. Financial concerns use these microwave networks for additional speed; if it's not available all the time, their competitive edge is limited, but their trades still go through, just not a few milliseconds in advance of their competitors. At least, one hopes that their trading strategy is based on a combination of financial fundamentals and a technological spee…

My comment was referring to the broader conversation about WISPs vs. fiber for consumer broadband.

I agree that in the financial use-case, the trade-offs are different, and perhaps you can just turn off your wireless link and just fall back to normal fiber when it's raining.

To address your last point, under my limited understanding of high-frequency trading, the edge is in predicting small fluctuations in price, and acting first. For that kind of trading if you incur unpredictable latency, you'd expect to lose money on more trades, since your orders come in after the latency arbitrage has been removed.

You still need to be able to (somewhat) accurately predict those price movements, but that prediction is meaningless if you can't also execute quickly. So the speed boost is a necessary but not sufficient criteria for executing many HFT strategies.

Re: Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised

#333

Post by masonic » Fri, Mar 09, 2018, 1:01 AM UTC

AFNobody wrote: post #329

masonic wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

refusing to run special elections illegally Examples?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/02/26/eric... > “Governor Scott Walker’s refusal to hold special elections is an affront to representative democracy,” Holder said in a statement. “Forcing citizens to go more than a year without representation in the general Assembly is a plain violation of their rights, and we’re hopeful the court will act quickly to order the governor to hold elections.”

From the article:

"The Legislature will be adjourned for 2018 before these seats could be filled in special elections."

Are you disputing the accuracy of that?

Also, you wrote "illegally"... and nothing in that article indicates illegality.