Yeah they're not really putting out new exciting technologies. But this is cheaper than every other equivalent solution on the market for sale today in the USA.
I tried out Netgear Orbi and I don't know who it's actually for. It tried deploying it at my dad's place, but had to return it because it just doesn't work. Dropped in Ubiquiti gear to replace it and I had the entire network up and running within 15 minutes of applying power. And it's had zero of the issues that I had with Netgear's system.
Just wanted to drop another data point that Linksys is also trash now. So for consumer-targeted gear it seems the options are:
1. Eero - great performance, no web config (only mobile app), cloud dependent, half the features paywalled for monthly subscription (eyeroll)
2. Linksys - confirmed piles of crap, a 6E mesh kit I tried last year performed worse than my 2018 Eeros so why bother. Config is even more limiting than Eero, the web UI is a slow disaster that times out constantly, and the app is terrible and the features are badly designed.
3. Netgear - sucks as parent comment explains
4. TP-Link - reputation is that it's bad but I haven't tried
5. Asus - never tried
6. Google - no doubt they'll kill and brick these at some point
TP-Link Deco line is reasonable. Fairly devoid of advanced features but plenty for probably 95% of the households out there - ie an easy VLAN separation into primary/IoT/guest networks, parental controls, QoS, meshing, etc.
Linksys should be immediately reflashed to run DD-WRT.
I have developed a deep dislike for UI overall through the years due to their many missteps (see: most of this thread), but those little PoE-powered 2.5G switches are amazing and I am surprised that while 2.5G is getting more and more popular, no one has any real competition for this product. No matter, I bought three!
I do wish they were even smaller (I've got one location I'd like to mount one inside a wall box, which is admittedly pretty niche), and I am never again touching UI's configuration software (even 10 years later I feel that wound), but, yeah... love these little guys.
I haven't really seen cheaper overall solutions for medium-sized home deployments than their gear. I need a layer 3 switch with 1 SFP+ 10Gbe port, and at least 5 1/2.5/5/10 Gbe copper ports with POE++ on at least 2 ports. I cannot find a cheaper solution that the USW-Pro-XG-8-PoE from any vendor. If you know one, please let me know.
Sure some of their hardware is overpriced, but they're pushing the limits of what's available in the 10 and 25 Gbe areas at relatively reasonable prices.
The corollary to them just working is that if they don't, they don't just ignore you like Apple. I reported a bug between two pieces of their hardware when talking to a specific 5Gbe NIC via their support without a support contract. They took a week to get back to me with a member of their QA department talking directly with me and having me validate beta firmware with them. After about a week of back-and-forth, they had a fixed version that has been deployed globally to everyone.
Meanwhile, Apple still hasn't fixed bugs that I reported to them between 2012 and 2014 while working for one of the largest universities in North America as a level 2 tech.
I get 1 mile of walking in a day at a minimum just going to and from the train in Chicago. I hit the 6K steps minimum that my watch wants by default every day by around 1-2pm if I take the bus transfer from the train to my office. I usually end around 8-10K steps just doing my commute and walking around the office. Going to the grocery store is another 2K steps roundtrip. Going out to dinner is another 1+ mile of walking minimum unless I get fast food.
When I lived in suburbs, I had to go out of my way to get even 6K steps in a whole day.
In Chicago, kids start going to school by themselves between 8 and 13 depending on how comfortable their parents are with them behaving properly on the way to school.
It's not illegal to leave a child under 14 unattended in Illinois. It is however illegal to leave a child under 14 unattended for an unreasonable amount of time in Illinois.
If you follow their advice and your child is ready to reasonably able to be left alone unattended, you can leave even 8-9 year olds unattended for long periods of time. It's not odd for children to be home alone after school for 4-8+ hours.
Your opinion on "CPS" in Illinois (I assume you meant DCFS and not Chicago Public Schools) is based on not understanding a single paragraph of the law that is written to be readable by the general public.
Kids go all over the place in Chicago while under 14 without their parents. It's literally not an issue.
Illinois lawyers [0] and child's rights policy thinkers [1] had evaluated it to mean a child under 14 can not be 'reasonably' left alone, up until 2023. It looks like you are correct and they updated it recently under an amended 705 ILCS 405/2-3 in January 2023.
Unless your child was born in the past couple years or following legislation, I think most people don't realize this, as even most the law firms still have the old '14' as the min age on their neglect pages. So you are correct with the asterisk that it glosses over that it was the case up until the past couple years and you are updating us on a new development.
>Your opinion on "CPS" in Illinois (I assume you meant DCFS and not Chicago Public Schools) is based on not understanding a single paragraph of the law that is written to be readable by the general public.
My opinion is based on what legal advice I got when I last researched it a few years ago. A lot of Illinois law is read in the context of common law precedent that makes the actual text less reliable. Mea Culpa.
Your first source is trying to sell a service, namely lawsuits against your ex. The law in 2022 was the same [0] in regards to the text that I mentioned. And as far as I can tell, that's the original text of the law as it was first passed in 1987.
The 2024 update [1] was basically just fixing typos.
The 2023 update [2] was reaffirming the original text and added safeguards to prevent abuse by police and prosecutors misapplying the law. This update did remove the explicit age mentioned, but if you look at the deleted text, you had to leave a minor unattended for a very long period of time not just "a trip to the store" for the law to have been violated before the change despite what the divorce attorneys were trying to tell people on their misleading website.
Also, I'm not going to go into my rant about IPI intentionally misleading people and lying by omissions and funny ways of presenting "data". If you use them as a source for anything and expect that what you read was the truth, then that's on you. They're a propaganda organization that spreads even more disinformation than the Heritage Foundation.
Renewables outside of solar farms where solar is installed at ground level, also have a significantly higher death and serious injury rate than nuclear does per GWH produced even after including the use of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons testing in the numbers to make nuclear look worse.
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