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I keep seeing ads that say that Wi-Fi is essential 💻

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I keep seeing ads that say that Wi-Fi is essential 💻

The thing is since the pandemic has come and gone, and my smartphone plan now offers unlimited data aka 60 GB a month, plus a 5 GB hotspot, I find that harder to believe. It’s hard to use that much data on a phone. The thing is the modern, basic smartphone can do nearly as much as laptop can do, at least as far as social media, web browsing, Youtube and email. 4G seems plenty fast to me.

I don’t particularly enjoy sitting at a desk — especially after a day at work doing that, and would rather have my phone where I can take it wherever is comfortable. My phone uses a lot less power then my laptop, easier to lug around, and works wherever I have cell service. And not having WI-FI on my laptop means when I’m using it, I don’t have distractions of social media or email pings, or the ability to wander off into the vast space of the inter-webs.

As I don’t like wearing the muzzle

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As I don’t like wearing the muzzle… 😷

It’s kind of rare for me to go down to the library to work on my laptop but I did for 45 minutes or so this afternoon – I wanted to download some data plus I just wanted to get out of my apartment for a while this afternoon. It also was a chance to get a few more steps in.

If muzzles weren’t required I’d probably go to the library more but these days I find I can do most things with my phone – and I have hot spot service too. I probably could get home internet but it’s expensive, uses a lot of electricity and I like the walk. 

My growing need for distraction 🙄

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My growing need for distraction 🙄

With the craziness of the world and maybe my own anxiety, I often feel it necessary to head up to the wilderness for a few days, away from cell service. While I used to crave camping places where I could stay connected, especially on long winter nights, nowadays after a year of remote work, sometimes from camp, I have a much stronger craving to get away from it all.

Guerrilla Wi-Fi Comes to New York – The New York Times

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‘Welcome to the Mesh, Brother’: Guerrilla Wi-Fi Comes to New York – The New York Times

Mr. Heredia is a 19-year-old volunteer with NYC Mesh, a nonprofit community Wi-Fi initiative, and he was there to install a router that would bring inexpensive Wi-Fi to the building. Mr. Cambridge’s family said they had become fed up with the take-it-or-leave-it pricing for spotty service that internet providers seem to get away with in this part of Brooklyn.

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Mr. Heredia crouched to affix the router to a plumbing vent, positioning it so the Wi-Fi signal could avoid the tree down the block. An app on his phone beeped to indicate the strength of the connection. Higher in pitch and more rapid was good. Mr. Cambridge whipped out his phone to search for NYC Mesh among the available networks. “It just came up!”

NPR

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Falun Gong, Steve Bannon, And The Battle Over Internet Freedom Under Trump : NPR

Of all the disruptions unleashed by the Trump White House on how the federal government typically works, the saga of one small project, called the Open Technology Fund, stands out.

The fantastical tale incorporates the spiritual movement Falun Gong, former White House strategist Steve Bannon, the daughter of a late liberal Congressman, and a zealous appointee of former President Donald Trump.

And specifically, it involves a fierce, months-long battle over whether the U.S. Agency for Global Media and the U.S. State Department should subsidize software developed by adherents of Falun Gong. The decision to prioritize this software stripped money intended for critical apps from a federal fund designed to bolster technology vital to dissidents overseas, officials say. On top of that, once approved for funding, over a six-month period the software served a grand total of four people. That's right, four.