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Google Fiber will be sold to private equity firm and merge with cable company (arstechnica.com)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 142 points 6 months ago (15 children)

Meanwhile SpaceX spends billions launching thousands of satellites into space and wreck the environment just so people can doomscroll their slop. When all we need are governments building some basic infrastructure like fiber internet for a fraction of the money.

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  • [–] 97 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    My prior city ran a survey on whether they should build out fiber to the homes around the city, since they were building their own fiber infrastructure anyway. Despite the city saying it would be cheaper and faster than the existing 0 or 1 options people had, my fellow residents cried communism and the city government scrapped the idea. Infuriating.

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  • [–] 42 points 6 months ago* (1 child)

    Americans are too stupid to vote in a lot of cases. why even hold a vote on something like this at all? just get it done. why bother asking permission from people who will answer without understanding the question

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  • [–] 16 points 6 months ago

    Look up easement abuse in the US on YouTube, Lehto's Law or Institute for Justice

    From rail, to cable providers, to city municipalities, easements in the US have been utilized maliciously to destroy and seize peoples properties

    Why bother asking permission?

    In the States, enough people have proven uncivilized enough and willing enough to face the consequences that come with utilizing tools easily and cheaply available at their disposal so that trespassers and even politicians think twice before sending people to mess with other people's land without asking permission

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  • [–] 13 points 6 months ago

    "ran a survey", this was the only clue I needed to realize that they never planned to do it in the first place. Surveys are so easy to manipulate that if someone tells you they made a decision based on a survey, that you can immediately assume that what they are really saying is that they made a decision that they knew would be unpopular, obviously biased, or otherwise disastrous, but they wanted to blame the decision on "other people".

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  • [–] 30 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    Australia almost did this right with the National Broadband Network.

    Unfortunately, it was then sabotaged by the government after an election changed the majority party.

    It seems to be back on track after wasting an extraordinary amount of time and money by installing copper lines, just to completely replace them with the fiber lines that were in the original plan.

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  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    Jesus copper is more expensive & time consuming, why!?

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Oz exports/produces copper? So maybe just a backwards mining subsidy?

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    Maybe but like from a networking perspectice it is harder to getndistance on, requires largwrs ducts, shorted cable drumming. There is no economy in which it makes sense, even the actual product would need heavy.... yeah maybe a government would do tat if they were backwards.

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  • [–] -4 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    I agree fiber is better but starlink isn't bad for the environment, it's bad for astronomy though sadly.

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  • [–] 12 points 6 months ago

    starlink isn't bad for the environment

    Umm, yes it is.

    https://www.science.org/content/article/burned-satellites-are-polluting-atmosphere

    In 2023, Murphy and colleagues reported the first direct evidence of how satellite re-entries are changing the composition of the stratosphere, based on data from a NASA WB-57 aircraft that flew from Alaska to altitudes of 19 kilometers. Using an onboard laser mass spectrometer, they found tiny droplets of sulfuric acid containing 20 different elements that likely came from satellites and rockets, as they were present in ratios that matched those of spacecraft alloys. The amounts of lithium, aluminum, copper, and lead all exceeded the estimated contributions from meteors.

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