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Comment by spsful | Hacker News Reader

I hope I don't sound stupid but could you explain the joke?

Edit: a word

The joke is a reference to the strategic petroleum reservers in the US:

"The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is an emergency fuel storage of petroleum maintained underground in Louisiana and Texas by the United States Department of Energy (DOE). It is the largest emergency supply in the world, with the capacity to hold up to 727 million barrels (115,600,000 m3)."[1]

The comment is satirically suggesting the telecom industry has similar reservers for such emergencies. These carriers are notoriously stingy and known for their data caps.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve_(U...

While the US's Strategic Petroleum Reserve is the most well known, Canada's Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve is way more amusing and fascination especially after they had a massive theft.

It was a fluid situation but they caught the sticky fingered thieves and delivered sweet sweet justice.

Ref: https://business.time.com/2012/12/24/why-does-canada-have-a-...

That's not a national reserve though as it's maintained by and only serves the interests of a cartel of private producers in Quebec.

The US also has a helium reserve: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve

The joke is implying that the reason ISPs employ data caps is because packets are a finite resource.

They're not, and the practice makes about as much sense as buying your internet by the minute.

Or the opposite, that available capacity is a limited resource, which "necessitates" data caps to maintain performance during peak periods.

It's still illogical, just not as illogical as claiming a communication medium offers unlimited bandwidth.

ATT is mostly saturated in urban areas particularly, making 'unlimited for all' a worse proposition.

That wasn’t the joke... this was about data caps on home internet.

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