Interested to know what the Deno JavaScript/TypeScript project thinks of this addition given it has already has a key value store backed by the database and JSON is JavaScript friendly.
As a tax paying Marylander I believe this is a reasonable economic choice for the state.
Especially Baltimore City which is receiving ~20k of these. The city does ongoing incremental social damage control, this is a part of it. The bottom 15% of people detract from the economy so thinking about it as service cost reduction rather than netting from it. The allocation rate for Baltimore City is something like 3.5% (!) while the rest of the state is like 2% and under.
It is about getting another couple percent of the people on the internet. Some approximate thread of literacy and ability to type and click is huge. The laptop modality is important to have over touch keys only.
There are many who don't have the wherewithal to get themselves online but it's a life changer for them to just have the basics.
As for vendor, Google is the lesser evil than alternatives by a wide margin. Top concerns are AdWords tricking poor into buying junk which is a part of the greater plan anyways; cyclical chronic marginalization with a slight upward trajectory. Gmail account creation is sorta evil. But where else is their email going to live? Hard to imagine a solution other than adverts and gov. surveillance being the cost center recoup. Google is way good at warehouse scale computing for web services (internally, GCP sucks).
Even crazier is that Maryland is already a top state for personal compute [1].
A couple months ago, I had my (physical) credit card denied at a cash register and - in a hurry - purchased some 'Apple Pay' cash that I had assumed would be usable at this apparently 'Apple Wallet' compatible register. It didn't work and I later discovered this cash was only usable to spend with Apple, like a gift card.
Then disputed the charge, won it, and switched off the iPhone 12 to a referb Pixel 6A w/ GrapheneOS, ublock, firefox, etc. and couldn't be happier. Love that my referb MacBook Air 15" does not require a Apple sign in so happy with that situation for now. Over with their mobile device charade.
Tim C. is laser focused on accounts/logistics/policy - world class at those - but inadequate as a leader for a digital electronics firm long term. And principle actor problem means he ultimately calls $ approval for long term multi billion product shots as a part of his public corp CEO fiduciary duties.
Just thinking of MRE and water is narrow, but in my region the most likely broad critical event is total supply chain cut, so it would be a long term shelter in place situation. So I got to think for myself on that point.
For example people in Amish country aren't going to give a crap in the first place and have some of their own supply chains.
I am glad about the alert system test and think it's a great use of funds!
Funny FEMA should just now come up, I just now spent some time considering FEMA!
It is very surprising to me that much emergency infrastructure exists, without providing very basic things to households like regionally relevant emergency kits and something like one month of MRE + Water. Rather than it sitting in some warehouse... because distribution becomes a very immediate problem.
Not forced but, offered to anyone who needs it and to be made aware of it.
Seems like that would be a win considering how much they spend per year - almost $100 USD/yr per US citizen. Freaking 30B USD.
Agreed. Would be curious on the math around slower, smaller, short-takeoff, airlines. Fast landing and takeoff is stressful and dangerous. History should have been the lesson about flying around what are effectively missiles. Sound is annoying in metro areas.
More pre-check security. Less hoopla. Many people have to drive 1hr+ to fly in the US.
Examples:
Graphics User Interface. The iPhone seated mobile compute as a permanent fixture, it and Android bringing internet and computing to billions of humans for the first time. Not just the wealthy industrials. Or IBM DB2 for SQL. Or Ford's Model T. Or the Gutenberg. None of these were the first first. Maybe even on the n-th iteration 2 decades after coming out of DARPA or global university research, something is just ready for commercialized prime time.
Computing was solved by Lady Ada and Babbage. It's all electrical engineering, software, fabrication, productization, mfg, displays, sensors etc. after that.
Semiconductor was a big deal in making it happen. But that's almost besides the point of the theory of compute if it can be solved in other novel ways using alternative material science.