> We now have better mobile networks and having no internet becomes a rare case even in remote locations.
That's simply not true. There is no internet on many parts of a train journey. There is no internet in parts of the underground rail network. There is no internet on the plane. There is no internet in nature. There is no mobile internet outside the EU, until you get a new SIM card. There is no usable internet in some hotels.
If you travel a bit, you know that internet is far from guaranteed.
People have been saying this for a decade, and I still sit there realising how different a bubble a lot of commenters here live.
I visit my parents most months. They live in rural Ireland. Not like a one off build down a back road miles from civilisation, but a small village of a few hundred people. They absolutely do not have reliable internet, and at this point they've cycled through every available provider.
To visit them I take a few hours train journey. For about half this train journey the internet is not reliable, whether edge/3g/4g or onboard service.
Before the pandemic, I visited the US a few times a year, United's onboard internet is very limited, expensive, and reliability is "it sometimes works".
So I regularly run into cases where I need to prepare ahead of time for no/spotty internet and still get surprises as some app refuses to launch because it decided now is the time it needed to update over a connection that's doing single digit kilobytes per second, or speak to a license server or whatever.
No kidding. Not to mention the disdain for things that are nearly essential in rural areas: 4wd trucks and gas/diesel instead of electric vehicles, or the right to carry firearms.
I live in rural PNW. Electric is at LEAST 20 years from being a feasible and reliable solution. ...and I say that as a civil engineer with some specialization in creating EV charge stations. 30-50 might be even be more plausible.
When I'm in the field, small things can turn into life-and-death situations pretty quickly out here when you're an hour and a half drive from cell reception, followed by another hour and a half drive to town with a small hospital/sheriff station, and you're up a dirt road where a tow-truck simply won't come. And the geology is notoriously unstable and slides/washouts/fallen-trees happen constantly.
My clients LIVE in those places, I only visit. They drive big diesel rigs (They often NEED to transport big heavy stuff, and you can store diesel for long time periods in a tank onsite), and a lot of them also have transfer tanks in the back of their truck for extra range. (Because it's needed!) They also almost all carry food/water/shelter/A chainsaw/tools/a gun/etc in their vehicle for a reason. Self-rescue is all you got a lot of the time.
That's my perspective as well and where I have the most visceral reaction.
But, to be fair, there are a lot of folks who will say 'I'd never go without a car' that haven't lived in a place with great public transportation. I used to think that way as well until I spent six months living in a place that had great bike paths and lots of options for local and regional public transportation. I started off with the intent of trying no-car daily living and it was perfectly fine. In six months I rented a car one time for a weekend trip, that was it.
So to me the lesson is to try to have a bit of empathy for the personal experience of the person making bubble points and focus on expanding their perspective rather than debating their position.
This leaks into the misinformation topic as well but there's another thread for that :)
Em. Half of my relatives live in a rural area. Not a single one of them has a 4WD truck (or any trucks at all). Why is it considered a necessity in the United States?
It's a pretty big country too, with shitty roads and pretty low population density.
Trucks or vans with 4x4 drive are pretty common in Mexico, Brazil, the middle east.
You're falling into the same trap that the article and GP's are highlighting: your experience that a FWD vehicle is enough "for me / my relatives" does not apply to this situation.
1) survival in animal / vehicle collusions with bears, deers, and moose
2) delivery of goods, including building material, animal feed, human food, etc
3) lack of even basic road infrastructure maintenance by government or municipality
4) "over prepared is only prepared", you're it, you're on your own
I lived for 20 years in a semi-rural area; you could certainly live for 99% of the time without a large cargo vehicle or 4x4. The other 1% you were chancing your life. Cargo and deliveries were certainly an issue though. Now just slide that ratio towards the middle.
Watch Matt's Offroad Recovery on YouTube, sometimes you need 4WD and ground clearance to get around reliably. Certainly more people own vehicles in that caliber than are necessary, but that's not always the case.
Where do your clients live to need guns for protection? I presume it's for wildlife? What kind of wildlife poses that kind of threat? I know it's mandatory to carry firearms outside of settlements on Svalbard for polar bear protection, and friends of friends have found out why the hard way. (One literally woke up with his head inside a polar bear's mouth.)
Also, I don't think "licensed hunting firearm for wildlife protection" is quite relevant to "gun rights". You don't need to buy your fifth AR-15 or full auto Uzi at the grocery store to protect yourself against bears.
To answer your question, the firearms are needed for protection from both wildlife and people, but much more so people. It's useful to have a rifle to put down a cow that's been hit by a vehicle and/or broken a leg or something.
However, I live in an area where stumbling upon foreign cartel marijuana grows is relatively common. They are known to aggressively defend them with firearms which are not legal to own in the jurisdiction they're in. It's also not uncommon for a truck full of guys intent on committing armed robbery to roll up onto a client's property.
An AR-15 would be an ideal defensive weapon for that use-case.
I have to admit, I'm not very experienced in armed conflicts with drug cartels, but the idea that engaging their people with your AR-15 would be better than retreating and/or deescalating seems more like a gun fantasy to me than a realistic assessment of such situations.
I have significantly less experience on the topic than Enginerrrd seems to, but I can confirm that:
> the idea that engaging their people with your AR-15 would be better than retreating and/or deescalating seems more like a gun fantasy to me than a realistic assessment
is more a product of your
> not very experienced in armed conflicts with drug cartels
that it is a accurate assessment of how effective/possible retreating and/or deescalating is.
Thanks! I can definitely see the merit of the cartel argument. Also good point about putting down injured animals.
(I still think gun regulation is a good thing, with some background checks to reduce the chances of people with e.g. psychosis getting their hands on assault rifles.)
You're coming into this pretty hot and it seems like you've fast-forwarded a few exchanges into a conversation that hasn't happened. It's going to difficult to exhibit empathy in that circumstance.
I don't understand most of your comment (English is my fourth language). I don't understand "coming into this pretty hot" and "fast-forwarded a few exchanges". I also don't understand the part about empathy. What's empathy got to do with anything? I obviously understand the individual words, but not the idioms behind or what you are trying to convey.
In case any parts of my comment were unclear, I'll try to reiterate or clarify.
First I'm genuinely curious about what kind of wildlife would pose a threat to the point where you need to defend yourself by carrying guns in your car, and where you would risk such an encounter. I try to convey that this is curiosity more than criticism by comparing it to the genuine need on Svalbard.
I then address their claim about "gun rights". My point is that protecting yourself from wildlife isn't about gun rights. No one (as far as I know) is looking to ban a licensed hunting rifle or high-caliber handgun where the owner would need it for protection. My point is that many "gun rights" advocates want to have five AR-15 or a fully automatic Uzi—guns that are highly capable of killing a high number of people and not very effective against bears. In other words, I understand their clients' (legitimate) needs but I don't think it's relevant to the concept of "gun rights".
> I visit my parents most months. They live in rural Ireland. Not like a one off build down a back road miles from civilisation, but a small village of a few hundred people. They absolutely do not have reliable internet, and at this point they've cycled through every available provider.
This is why state run services matter, Because they will 'serve' in areas where private businesses cannot turn up profit and so they have no incentive to serve.
5-6 years ago, In India only the state run telecom - BSNL's service would be available at remote, hill stations. But with 4G it couldn't keep up with private telecom and the company is nearly done for. So now again there's no connectivity in remote areas and mountains as private players don't bother ~~serving~~ doing business there.
This is especially worse with pandemic, many in such areas have lost communication outside world and remote-education is non-existent for children there.
> So I regularly run into cases where I need to prepare ahead of time for no/spotty internet and still get surprises as some app refuses to launch because it decided now is the time it needed to update over a connection that's doing single digit kilobytes per second, or speak to a license server or whatever.
Recently I was on a flight and prepared a book on my iPad the day before. iBooks decided that it was a good idea to “offload it into the cloud”, a book that wasn’t even 24 hours on my device with plenty of space available. Who knows…
Or when an app decides that it's too out of date spontaneously, and I literally get stuck on an error screen when I just launch the app that used to work up until today... "just install the latest update to enjoy this app"
Yeah, that's a dick move when I'm not on wifi or don't have data access at all on a long hiking trip.
> iBooks decided that it was a good idea to “offload it into the cloud”, a book that wasn’t even 24 hours on my device with plenty of space available
I had the same problem with Google Books on my Galaxy devices. There's a feature that will let you pin the book to be available offline. But you have to do that for every book.
It really takes away the usefulness of the devices.
Also: there's no Internet in random buildings, underpasses, corridors - even in the middle of a metropolis.
For example, a grocery market near me somehow manages to attenuate cellular signals so badly there's no mobile connection more than 3 meters inside. Meaning no Internet when I walk between shelves, and no Internet when I stand in a queue for 10 minutes.
(Sure, the building has plenty of wired and wireless Internet connections in it, but I'm not allowed to use any of them.)
My flat is completely shielded somehow, without the microcell I only get cell connection by opening the windows. Windows closed, if more than a meter from the window there’s basically no signal.
And like GP the nearest grocery has basically no signal inside the store, it only picks up beyond the checkout lanes.
Insulating windows often have metallic films that can block radio signals. Combined with the tendency to use metallic films for insulation and metallic meshes for support means that modern buildings are often Faraday cages.
Which is sort of ironic in that modern communications is dependent on radio. Older buildings tend to be better for cell reception.
> Insulating windows often have metallic films that can block radio signals.
Yep that's pretty much what I inferred at the time.
It was pretty frustrating back then though, good thing I moved in in late summer and opening the windows any time I needed to do admin (either online or by phone) was fine, would have been rather annoying in winter.
> Which is sort of ironic in that modern communications is dependent on radio. Older buildings tend to be better for cell reception.
Indeed, and moving from an older building (where reception had never been any issue) is exactly what I was doing.
Of course, when you get to buildings that are old enough, you have several layers of solid material (brick/stone) on the exterior, as well as things like double-thickness brick interior walls as well. This doesn't do RF propagation any favors, either.
My home was built in 1830 and 2.4Ghz wifi is strictly line of sight within the building, and cellular phones must be kept near windows on the side of the building facing the nearest cell tower to function.
And this isn't in a rural area either, this is life in a brownstone in the middle of a large city...
It gets more interesting. There used to be no internet in some corners of a fast food restaurant I frequent. But then I bought a new phone and now all of a sudden there is internet. I don't know what it is, is it the antenna layout, or is it the modem hardware or firmware, or did the carrier do something on their side, or is it something else entirely.
But the point is, those 10 minutes are exactly the "low quality" time I could spend doing something useful with your app, instead of using "high quality" time for it (e.g. when I'm in my office). But if your app doesn't work off-line, I can't do that.
Yes, it can be hell. Especially when you find out you need to make a quick bank transfer so that the purchase will go through (There's a certain shop in Warsaw which has dead zone for cellular internet near the checkouts, I always need to double check before going to pay...)
I can deal with it thanks to ebooks and the like, it's the serious problem of "if transaction gets declined because I forgot to top up the card, I have to leave the shop to fix it".
With boredom I would just read ebooks, practice that goes back to very expensive mobile internet era and a symbian s60 phone. I knew a queue was epic when I had to go online to download another book because I finished one end-to-end while waiting...
in my case it was official S60 app for .mobi ebooks, the format that most people might now know as Kindle (the difference is, afaik, to this day one byte being swapped).
To make it funnier, the files were essentially a Palm resource container with simplified HTML, and I had a reader on pretty much everything from my small 320x320 screen of nokia e51, through le random windows mobile GPS, various android devices, PCs, etc. :)
There's a few subtle points here. One is that I don't think the article actually disagrees with you — it just assumes internet access is readily available for the sake of argument, and moves on to explain why offline-first matters even despite that.
The more interesting point is that "internet access is flaky" isn't necessarily a good argument for going offline-first. Rather, it only suggests that you need your client to be more resilient to being knocked offline in an online-first world. Rather, the article argues that an offline-first is interesting unto itself as a completely different architecture that's closer to a desktop application where the binary is delivered through a browser.
Put differently — they're not trying to argue you should make Gmail work offline, but rather that you should consider structuring your application as Thunderbird inside the browser.
Yeah, I did not expect the comments of a pro-offline-first article to be filled with complaints that he didn't consider lots of places don't have reliable internet!
Amen brother! Nothing worse then some JS based APP using 2G/3G in Africa. Its not about speed but latency and packet drops :/ No one optimizes for this stuff. Makes the internet unusable even if you have nice bursts of 100kb-2mb/s sometimes.
You should read the rest of the article and realise the author actually agrees with you. The comment you are replying to is taking the quote out of context.
Some MNO base stations are powered by solar and only operate a few hours a day, sometimes a full day and sometime a partial night (depending on batteries, if they have).
Not everyone has electricity, so people walk to town to charge their phones at spaza shops for a few minutes/hours. Fiber/POTS is non existent.
Outside of larger town and cities, reception is non-existent or spotty at best. You might get reception near a highway.
My understanding is when a cellphone has weak service it boosts the signal to try and reach a tower. In my experience, it feels like it drains the battery incredibly fast. Are there OSes or phones that accommodate this?
That's correct - if the signal is weak the battery is drained quickly. I'm not aware of any OS or phone which can mitigate that - is there any other way than to give up on the connection?
If you're battery constrained and not expecting a signal most of the day I imagine you could put the radio to sleep for 5-30m. I kinda understand a weak signal getting boosted and draining a battery, but when there's none at all? It just seems like a use case they didn't care enough to address. Since it sounds like this is the primary use case, I figured someone might have tried.
True. I notice it when out camping in the mountains where there is no reception. On airplane mode the battery can easily last 2 to 3 days max but if you leave airplane mode off, it will die within 1 day.
And even within the EU, it's not guaranteed. I'm currently in Berlin and the internet here is ass.
My current provider dies on me at least once a day and the speeds are atrocious. Mobile network is also weird. Every time I go into a store for shopping I lose my connection. Once I come out I get a cute text message saying "Welcome to Germany, don't forget to get tested"
More like a German thing... This happens to me in Stuttgart, too. If I want to make a call when I'm at home, I usually just call with Signal over my wifi, because the normal cellular network is terrible.
Yeah same. Doesn’t work in parts of my apartment or Treppenhaus or Hof at all, also doesn’t work in shops for some reason which can be surprisingly annoying if I quickly need to look up something for a recipe or message my girlfriend to ask if we need something. Data is also absurdly expensive.
My flat is the same, essentially no signal inside, just open the window and I immediately get full strength LTE.
Ask your provider for a microcell, if you want to change the situation (and often waste less battery, unless cellular is disabled smartphones tend to dislike not having signal or having poor signal quite a lot).
I'm also in Berlin. I know what you mean. It became a personal joke to note that the most remote corners of the world have better internet than parts of the Ring.
But isn't the rest of the article more true if reliable internet access isn't available?
Their opening remarks about poor internet access now being rare is followed by
>So do we even need offline first applications or is it something of the past?
Their premise isn't "now internet access problems are solved we should use offline first ", it's "even if we we say that internet access is solved, we should still use offline first".
I think the point is that even if you grant this significant apparent limitation of the premise, it doesn't mean the whole thing is useless. (Nevertheless, the presentation is still incoherent, because it both welcomes and disparages data with multiple current states in semi-independent databases.)
Even if we have perfect and constant connections, you still obtain benefits by writing in this model: for instance, if you assume you have a constant and perfect network connection, you can connect a websocket to the server to ensure you always have the current data for each page and data type. Or, you could follow the offline first model and have a singe update/subscription system to mirror the database locally.
I'm very nervous about their presentation. It says "offline first" and "websites lie because they show you the current state of the data at the last time you had a network connection". If the latter is a problem, a lie, then you can't possible write offline first. You might write using a model that works equally well online and offline, but you necessarily accept forking data and multiple current representations if you allow a computer to show the data without being connected to the authoritative repository of that data.
I think the author has many good ideas, and might have a very good implementation of a very good set of ideas, but this intro page reads like the sort of thing that gets misinterpreted a dozen times and you end up with something worse than current interpretations of "premature optimisation is the root of all evil".
On my Berlin-Poznan trips, I sometimes had a 10s average ping, and an equally absurd packet loss rate. SSH worked great, but the regular internet was unusable.
ping is what the ping program reports, which, depending on the QoS settings the provider has, can be very different from the roundtrip time of packets you actually care about.
Your provider can for example filter out all ICMP packets giving you timeouts for "ping", but you can still reach the host just fine with other protocols. Similarly your provider probably prioritizes protocols that require low latency like VoIP over ICMP packets.
Also: People who just do not have service for accessibility reasons. I meet many people who only use WiFi either because they can't afford service or can't deal with the paperwork or some other reasons.
What's interesting is if you go to Columbia, South America you get signal everywhere, even in the jungle, because when the cellular companies came in and asked if they could create a network Columbia said sure, but it had to work everywhere, even in the mountains and jungle.
We could have internet everywhere if our governments gave 2 shits and wasn't corrupt as all get out.
To be fair, you'd get a surprising amount of the public objecting to building infrastructure for mobile networks in "scenic" areas like jungles or forests
I live in London. There are spots in London where mobile data just randomly does not work. Clapham Junction - the busiest rail station in the country was often a black spot for me just a couple of years ago. The rail corridors in to London often have sections with no 4g and variable 3g.
You don't need to go to a remote area either; there is absolutely zero signal in large parts of the subway in my (European) city. I'd like to see the author enjoying his "better mobile networks" while traveling around there. So yes, offline first is still a very nice thing to have.
Don't even have to travel far. We live in "golden horseshoe", the greater Toronto metropolitan area with 10m people and I am shocked how many towns have horribly poor service (and it has also made me realize how inefficient / data hungry most modern messengers are).
Ikea in Ljubljana (slovenia), vilesse (italy) and klagenfurt (austria)... no mobile reception inside. They have wifi, if you remember to connect to it.
Those are country development and political choice issues. Last time I took the train (this weekend) it provided a free wifi access all long and I hadn't any cut. I can't remember last time I took a subway and hadn't 4G connectivity. Oh, actually I do, it was in Paris but I wouldn't dare using my iPhone there anyway. There technology is there but Western governments at all administrative levels are more busy bullying their citizens than providing comfort options like East-Asian administrations and companies are.
>[..] but Western governments at all administrative levels are more busy bullying their citizens than providing comfort options like East-Asian administrations and companies are.
I love complaining about the lack of effiency in the EU and the West as much as the next person. But you're comparing the West's "bullying" with a region in the world that consists of quite a few harsh dictatorships that do lot worse than bullying. I take a sketchy phone signal on a train over systemic human rights "bullying" any day.
That buildings shield reception is not a political issue but a physical limitation.
When I'm in my super market I know that I will not have reception in the back, same in the underground part of my fitness center.
Apparently it's not. I live in Finland and I've never had my internet connection cut off in a supermarket (or any other large building). This has happened to me sometimes in Southern Europe, though. I don't know if they boost the reception somehow in large buildings here or if the building materials are just somehow different.
It's mostly your random good luck and other people's random bad luck. A lot of building design choices can result in severe signal attenuation in microwave range, and not all buildings will have internal femtocells to cover that - or femtocells that accept your SIM.
Also, some buildings change over time in how they attenuate, especially freshly built ones where the walls are still "drying" can have close to 0 reception inside. When my parents built their current home, I had to keep an informal map of where the signal was strong enough to use GPRS (yay 7s ping in MUDs) and for voice we usually went outside.
In my experience, subway connectivity got markedly better when the city hosted the Olympics and spent time/money attracting tourists. This was in line with more open wifi access or sim card availability.
That's simply not true. There is no internet on many parts of a train journey. There is no internet in parts of the underground rail network. There is no internet on the plane. There is no internet in nature. There is no mobile internet outside the EU, until you get a new SIM card. There is no usable internet in some hotels.
If you travel a bit, you know that internet is far from guaranteed.