I figured it was better to wait a while to find out what happened after all of the hysteria, speculation, and rumor-mongering faded away and the facts revealed themselves. In the meantime, I am paying more of my attention to what’s going on in the rest of the country, and specifically, New Hampshire, my home state.
==*==
Now that Trump’s term of office is coming to an end, the tech oligarchies are showing their true colors and wiping out free speech, wiping out the accounts of people with whom they disagree, redefining free speech they disagree with as ‘hate speech’, thereby ‘violating’ their terms of service. (In other words, if you post speech they do not agree with they will do away with it, with no appeal possible.) One thing I have to point out is that speech that is truly hateful, eliminationist (“Trump supporters should put up against a wall and shot,” and “They should be sent to prison and if they don’t reform, executed.”), or obvious prevarication is perfectly acceptable to the social media censors because it’s aimed at non-Progressives. (If they didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all.)
Two of those tech oligarchies have gone so far to ban social media apps that don’t censor. Both Apple and Google have banned Parler from their app stores unless they impose the same draconian censorious terms of service as Facebook, Twitter, and the other Progressive social media providers. At least those and others are available via a web browser and do not require an app to use. An app is a convenience but not a requirement to use those alternative social media platforms.
It is time for these social media giants lose their Section 230 protections because they are no longer providers, but publishers. But I doubt that will happen because it gives the Progressives in Congress control over a wide swath of the American people’s speech...unless those social media giants start censoring governmental Progressives. Then and only then will Congress act to remove those protections because only then will they see them as “dangerous to free speech”.
==*==
I have performed a few WiFi upgrades here at The Gulch, restaging an unused 802.11ac wireless router and setting it up as a second WiFi network. I have been moving everything from 2.4GHz to 5GHz because the former is so crowded. Looking at the available 2.4GHz WiFi access points (AP) I can see from The Gulch, I counted 47 different APs. The spectrum plot showed every single channel being used, with a lot of overlap from edge to edge. Looking at the 5GHz WiFi APs in the area I saw three (one of which was mine), so it made sense for me to shift everything at The Gulch over to 5GHz.
5GHz has a number of advantages and a few disadvantages in relation to 2.4GHz. A few of the advantages:
More bandwidth – up to 80MHz/channel on 5GHz versus 20MHz/channel on 2.4GHz – which means higher data rates. This comes in handy when one’s connection to the ‘Net is high speed. (The Gulch enjoys a 250Mbs download/20Mbs upload connection.)One of the disadvantages is also on the list as an advantage: Shorter range. Sometimes users need longer range and 2.4GHZ has a longer range than 5GHz, all other things being equal. There can be a trade-off between range and data speed, so it is something that needs to be kept in mind.
More channels to choose from.
Shorter range which means more 5GHz APs can be located in the same area with lower incidences of interference between the access points.
But wait! There’s more!
One of the biggest upgrades to WiFi in two decades is being rolled out that will increase users’ options. One of those options is the addition of the 6GHZ band which adds more usable bandwidth for WiFi, in this case over 1200MHz of bandwidth. (The 6GHZ band takes in the upper 200MHz of the 5GHz band which has not been used for WiFi until now.) The two present WiFi bands offer about 400MHz of spectrum total. The new 6GHz band will allow channels of up to 160MHz in bandwidth while the present bands are limited to 20MHz, 40MHz, or 80MHz in bandwidth. This means data rates of up to 9.6Gbs are possible.
It is unlikely such data speeds will be reached during actual usage as the conditions to achieve the theoretical maximum assumes no other users on the frequency and an unobstructed line of sight between the wireless access point and the device, just to name two. But is anyone really going to complain about not reaching the theoretical maximum data speed? Unlikely.
It must be understood that one of the big limiting factors for the effective data speed is going to be the connection speed to the ‘Net. It won’t matter if you have a wireless router and device capable of 9.6Gbs if your connection to the ‘Net is 100Mbs. However, connections to other devices on the same network will be considerably faster.
Devices that can use this new band – wireless routers/access points, laptops, phones, TVs, etc – are expected to become available during the first few months of this year.
==*==
We are already seeing the effects of the creation of the New Soviet Union here in America.
A self-important and thoroughly indoctrinated Progressive 18-year old doxxed her own mother, aunt, and uncle for attending the Trump-inspired rally in Washington DC.
It appears she feels no guilt in turning in her family. She was upset that her mom, once a Democrat, became a Trump supporter. What would one expect from an ignorant, inexperienced, and fully indoctrinated Young Pioneer?
One has to wonder if her creed is “The State is Mother. The State is Father.” It would certainly explain a few things about the little snitch.
==*==
And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where we see Washington going to hell, people are starting to realize it is time for the government to be afraid of the people and not the other way around, and where we’re hoping for more snow.