zw123456

The article is a good high-level overview of how speed tests work but there are a lot of technical details that vary greatly from one carrier to another and between speed test sites.

- some speed test sites run multiple parallel streams (TCP, FTP, HTTP) then show the aggregate. This tends to show an exaggerated result since most of us are not running a lot of parallel streams in normal use, although it is not uncommon to have between 1 - 8, that is a more realistic number (some are 50 or more, not realistic).

- some carriers detect known speed test server 5 tuples and give those priority over normal user traffic (and yes, I know this because I have worked for some who do that, in fact most do). Speed test that rotate the 5 tuple overcome that issue. you can also be test this yourself using a VM of your own on Azure or AWS.

- depending on the carrier, some have other types of throttling they do for different types of traffic that are not applied to speed test traffic. Some will throttle video for example, or if it is a wireless carrier they may throttle if you are tethered rather than directly on their device, or may have different priority for your plan.

there are a lot other factors such as your end user equipment, if your CPU is fast etc. also, how you are connected, wifi vs. wired.

Speed tests are a very general measure of the performance you may get in normal use from your provider, but not perfectly indicative.

it was in 1984 and it was a telco. and there have been other examples of the main point I was making which is that wrong doing gets swept under the rug by bureaucracies to avoid embarrassment. Just a few years ago a department head was putting through PO's for expensive equipment and approving it himself and then selling it on ebay. He got caught, they fired him but did not press charges. Me moved to another company and as I have seen many times, same title.

I have seen numerous examples of this over the years in both big companies and start ups. it happens.

That reminds me of this scam that this director at a BIG company I used to work at did. He got SSN's of dead people and made fake resume's and interviewed himself and hired them. Then collected their paychecks. Eventually he got caught of course, but big companies are funny how they don't like things like that getting out because it makes them look back and would shake investor confidence etc. So they just let him go, didn't prosecute or even try to get the money back, just swept it under the rug. I heard a year or so later he was at another big company with the same title and job. No idea if he was still doing that but would not surprise me if he continued doing unscrupulous things.

Unfortunately, that type of thing seems to happen a lot in large bureaucracies for those same types of reasons, whether governments, big business or whatever, they want to sweep mistakes like that under the rug. Hopefully they plug the hole before doing that. One can hope.

Ya, could be part of it.

the Published a book about it, I have a copy of it some place, I think was called Management Development or something like that.

Beats the heck out of me. You tell me, Like I said, I am not sure I know what that even is TBH.

OK, I dunno if I can top that. Definitely not. But...

I went to work for Bell Labs in 1978 after getting MSEE,

then went to work for a start up with a bunch of Labs buddies about 5 years later

that company got bought out by one of the "baby Bells" that went on a spending spree of acquisitions after the break up of ma bell, they bridged my service as if I had never left, hey, thank you very much !

then, a few years later I went to work for another startup working on this new cool technology you may have heard of "cellular" wireless phones duh. K, again, guess what, airtouch bought us out, they bridged my service again, hey thank you very much dudes.

Then, (tired of this yet) after working for those dolts for a while I left and went to work for another start up which will go nameless but has to do with fiber stuff. Those guys got bought out by the Big V company, they bridged my service again ! thank you very much again (tons of vaca time).

I have worked for, but my count 5 different companies and yet, never lost a day of service! 44 years and counting.

So anyone out there who would like to get bought out by a big company, simply hire me and they will buy you to get me back. Probably, I am thinking that has to be it. right ? it's all about me :)

everything is radioactive to some degree https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/everything-emits-rad...

so what

OMG, PTSD is kicking in for me here. I was in a similar program way way back in the 1970's early 1980's with Ma Bell. I was working at Bell Labs after getting my Masters in EE and they put me in what they called the JET program (Junior Executive Training).

First off, I never wanted to be an Executive, whatever that is. I wanted to do research, but when you are young and right out of school and they hit you with that you don't say no. So I went with the flow. They flew us around the country and we would be put in all these similar goofy psychologist designed situations. They even told us that they had hired PhD's in psychology and they where trying to figure out what makes a good Executive. I recall them giving us the Rorschach test and for fun I would say crazy stuff like, that looks like the nucleus of an atom when you are supposed to, obviously say, that looks like a butterfly, but fuck them, ya, it looks like a butterfly but for all we know that is what the nucleus of an atom looks like, or a super nova nebula, whatever.

These psychologists followed us around for 25 years and eventually wrote a book about us "guinea pigs". I have a copy of this book and I can clearly see me in it, I am that asshole, no question about that.

Their brilliant conclusion was that people with very high IQ's (I guess they said I had scored "off the charts" on IQ, whatever the fuck that actually means). So, OK, I am too smart to be an executive is what they concluded. But they never asked me if I gave a shit about being an Executive and maybe I was just fucking with them.

Anyhow, it was funny, and I got to travel all over the country on their dime and half the people in this thing just slept with each other and crap. Maybe that is the real test of Exec material ? hahahaha.

contributing factor mentioned https://darwininamerica.wordpress.com/2014/09/29/the-control...

More useful calories to devote to awake activities such as communication, thought, planning and etc.

mentioned in the article:

>We should think of early human camps and bands as like a snail’s shell,” he says. Groups of humans may have shared simple shelters. A fire might have kept people warm and bugs away. Some group members could sleep while others kept watch.

I had a fever so my Mummy made me stay home.

If it was as simple as familiarity, then babies would not recognize dissonance https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3735980/ Although I suppose there could be an argument that familiarity began in the womb but that seems like a stretch IMO.

The more interesting question to me, is not what makes a major or minor, that is a simple google search away, there are tons of references about that; the more interesting question in my mind is why do certain harmonic intervals sound more pleasing to humans (perhaps animals as well) than other intervals.

Is it arbitrary? Perhaps not. There has been a lot of research on that as well, for example: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20930-why-harmony-ple...

So, once you figure out what a major and minor are, then the next question is why does that sound better than other combinations of notes?

I have one url to say https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-space_path_loss

just look at the equation, physics don't lie.

mic drop

You can take them apart with the right tools, they have a weird screw head but any decent pc repair kit should have the right attachment. You can actually remove the platters, generally doing that and tossing the lot in the recycle place is fine, good luck to anyone trying to put them back and get it to work but for an extra measure give the platter a little buff with sand paper or just scratch it good.

I've done it a bunch of times and it is actually kind of fun

If you have a drill press you can just drill a hole through it. if you're my Dad you take it out to the back 40 and shoot it .

The one thing in there I forgotten or overlooked is to put [pdf] on the end, I just assumed it did that automatically. I can't recall if I have ever posted a pdf but if I do in the future I will have to try to remember to do that. Although, it would be a small suggestion that it could be automated.

I think the old saying goes "luck is what you make of opportunity" or something like that.

I grew up on our family farm and my grandpa was tough old German immigrant who had all these sage old saying (often laced with colorful language, swear words in German). But most of that old wisdom and sayings all turn out to be true as ever today I think.

He would say things like:

Doing something the right way is hard work, but not as much work as doing it again because you screwed it up the first time.

Or if someone, a farm hand or whoever (sometimes me) would be struggling to figure out how to do something (e.g. get the tractor engine going) he would ask if you wanted him to do it for you, if you said yes then he would call you a nutzloser scheist (useless shit) or something like that. The correct answer was no, please tell me how sir, or something along those lines.

He told me, if you hate farm work you better do good in school so you can get a good job, become an engineer, then you won't have to come back here and work like a dog all day.

He had a lot of them like that, it stuck with me. Sorry I don't have any famous people to name.

I grew up on our family farm and my grandpa was tough old German immigrant who had all these sage old saying (often laced with colorful language, swear words in German). But most of that old wisdom and sayings all turn out to be true as ever today I think.

He would say things like:

Doing something the right way is hard work, but not as much work as doing it again because you screwed it up the first time.

Or if someone, a farm hand or whoever (sometimes me) would be struggling to figure out how to do something (e.g. get the tractor engine going) he would ask if you wanted him to do it for you, if you said yes then he would call you a nutzloser scheist (useless shit) or something like that. The correct answer was no, please tell me how sir, or something along those lines.

He told me, if you hate farm work you better do good in school so you can get a good job, become an engineer, then you won't have to come back here and work like a dog all day.

He had a lot of them like that, it stuck with me.

Ya, but IMO, being a good neighbor is walking over and knocking on the door and saying Hi, My name is ____ and I am your neighbor, how are you today. Good to meet you. blah blah. Hey listen, that tree limb, can we work that out sir ? I can pay someone or do it myself or you can what are you comfortable with yadda yadda.

Resorting to lawyers deserves a shit stain unless the above does not work first.

disagree this "scary lawyer letter" scam has nothing to do with the law, it has to do with a neighbor who is a cry baby who has no case and a lawyer who makes a lot of money off a little old lady who has him on speed dial.

It's a legal lawyer scam. He get's probably $1K for sending a stupid letter, little old lady gets to pay her lawyer to do her bidding instead of walking over and simply saying hey, you tree limb is over my property or whatever.

The Bar actually has the neighbor "scary letter" thing called out in their rules that you cannot file a complaint with them if you get one of those.

Which tells you what a crappy (hehe) hustle these letters must be.

Ya, totally right, those "try to scare you" lawyer letters from the neighbor who has their lawyer on speed dial are generally bullshit.

In this case of course nothing happened. But my friend said his neighbor just gave him a dirty look from then on but that would have happened anyway.

If someone can sue you they probably will, If they don't have a case their lawyer will send you a stupid letter.

True story:

A friend of mine got a letter from his neighbor's attorney bitching about his tree or something stupid. So he literally wiped his ass with it and then took a picture of it and emailed it back with the body of the email saying thanks, I was running out of TP.

can you add that feature ?

agree iperf to a server is a good test as long as the 5 tuple is rotated so they dont figure it out.

Yes, I do this as part of my job.

I help manage a system that does something like this for a large network operator. We have test phones that run TWAMP, RFC 6349 and iperf (and a few other tests) on a routine schedule to special test servers. generating data which you will never ever see.

But you could do something similar if you had the desire. I have yet to see anyone do that yet.

All network providers have various throttling systems set up to limit your throughput, that is pretty universal, and, most of such systems are intentionally bypassed based for speed tests. They know the 5 tuples for all the speed test servers and bypass throttling for those test.

Yes, speed tests are rigged, think, Volkswagen Diesel, an inside joke pretty widely known in the industry.

Agree. It's funny how people I know who are "non-tech" intuitively understand that of course speed-tests are rigged, but tech people somehow think that the same place that allows Facebook pages that say that the jews have space lasers, that same place somehow is completely honest about speed tests. I am just pointing out, fake world is fake world. Just because it's says Mbps does not exempt it from fakeness. Fake is as fake does.

Just interesting that people who are smart enough to understand other fake things on the internet (that maybe some people not as smart as you are not understanding). But when it is some ISP tricking you, all of a sudden, everyone is up in arms about it.

It's interesting.

It's not illegal to make a speedtest that says you got some big value that is BS.

It's illegal to put arsenic in a bottle and label it Vitamin C.

It's not illegal to call you TV channel "something" news then just make things up.

Maybe it should be illegal to call what you are saying is news when it is made up? it used to be (google fairness doctrine)

Maybe there should be some regulated valid speed test, but there isn't.

there are a lot of things that are legal that are unethical.

there are a lot of things that are illegal that are sort of marginally unethical.

But, when you elect congress people who are not very technical, probably not going to happen. Just saying.

I don't have a good answer for you, just a lot of interestig observations.

Yes, and, the joke in the industry is that network speed tests are to network performance what the Volkswagen Diesel was to emission tests :).

All carriers implement various types of throttling or rate limiting, for a lot of reasons (anti-ddos, cost control, etc.)

But; universally, they bypass these rate controls such as Cisco PGW ADC (Application Detection and Control) and LTE eNB ABR for wireless as examples, and many others similar features that limit the rate the user actually gets. And in almost all cases, these systems are designed to allow speed tests to bypass the rate limiting.

Commercial Speed tests are in no way a valid or reliable way of understanding the quality of a network service. I am a little surprised that this is breaking news on HN however. I would think this would be pretty well understood by this community?

BTW. Fast.com does is not always immune to this "Volkswagen diesel" effect. The only way to know for sure is to have a VM or bare metal server someplace and do an iperf to it.

I think the conundrum is people want a computer to read their minds to make things easier for them, but when it does, it creeps them out. The solution, IMHO, is less technical and more psychological. If I was trying to replace FAANG, that is the thing I would consider how to address.