I actually did have a laptop battery fail recently -- it swelled and the only reason i realized was the charging light switched from steady to blinking rapidly -- something it usually does when the battery voltage is critically low.

Old laptops don't always come with good battery charging software. Ideally you could set the battery to UPS mode and have it sit to 50%.

Funny enough there is a little Bluetooth dongle that can add this capability to usb-c laptops, but the development is now vibe coded and the developer has gone full AI and the quality of the software and customer support has taken a nosedive.

I wanted to share what I've been doing for harm reduction, since i pretty much have to charge my scooter indoors.

I bought a $10 countdown timer outlet that plugs into the wall. If i want to charge the scooter to 100% i set it to 6 hours or so.

Scootbatt recently came out with an app estimate that does two helpful things:

1. Gives an estimate for how a charge up to 80% will take
2. Notifies your phone when the scooter reaches 80%

I use these features to charge until 80% and then de-energize the charger, unless i am going to need 100% charge that day.

It's a psa warning about the effects of books

Thanks for agreeing it would be a useful estimate to include for informational purposes. It is not as if each customer is rolling their own file transfer protocols; they are fairly standard.

Thank you for the detailed explanation. It makes sense why the ISP can most easily measure the network bit speed, rather than the speed or bandwidth of services carried on the network.

It still isn't a very useful measurement for a layperson customer. In other industries, regulations exist that make it easier for the customer to place the data shown to their real world use of the service. Which in your metaphor might be "how much stuff can I send through the postal service", rather than "how big is the postal truck?." I get that this is a harder question to estimate for, but it is the more useful question to answer for the customer, and questions like these are answered in other industries.

For example, cars are sold with EPA-mandated miles per gallon estimates. Appliances are sold with energy star ratings. They are not perfect estimates, and everything from wind resistance to road quality to driving style is going to affect miles per gallon. The car company might prefer to share the thermal efficiency of the engine, or the rolling resistance of the stock tires, which they have more control over rather than the messy real world miles per gallon. But this isn't very useful to know for the customer, who will be driving in the real world.

If I fire up btop and I run two speedtests at once, I can measure what Mbps I am getting when my connection is maxxed out, and compare that to the speed the ISP quotes. If we convert that to megabytes (or mebibytes if you prefer) per second, and apply a scaling factor to represent the packet overhead, you could arrive at an estimated maximum megabyte/s file transfer speed, which would be more in the ballpark of what a customer would see when they fire up Steam and try to download GTA VI, which is 250 GB.

Packet overhead varies depending on the protocol (I read this for reference: https://linuxvox.com/blog/what-is-the-optimal-size-of-a-udp-packet-for-maximum-throughput/#overhead-when-extra-bytes-eat-into-throughput) but since miles per gallon also varies based on multiple factors, I think giving an estimated max download speed is fair.

I don't see what the downside would be to have the network speed listed in Mbps like always, and also give an estimated file download speed for reference.

Nice!

If the file is downloading at 112 megabytes per second, how is the link maxing out at 125 megabytes per second?

If it is 100% why is it 90%?

It's not some reason, the reason is that file transfer uses bytes.

Hiding it is anti-consumer.

What good is it that i can reach the local node in 1000Mbit/s if their first hop to an internet server slows the connection to 90%?

If i upgrade to the 2500Mbit/s connection, am i only getting 90% of that too?

They should advertise what internet service they're really providing.

There were so many games, just not AAA titles

At the upper end of that range, you are only getting 90% of their advertised bandwidth, even in ideal conditions. Is that actually an acceptable loss? Maybe they shouldn't advertise 125 mb/s if they can only deliver 90% of that in the best case.

Routers, network cards, and Ethernet cables being "gigabit" or similar is also confusing, but i see your point there.

I still don't see the harm in providing both formats, thought i do see the point in not switching to mb/s only.

In the example you posted, it would be 1000Mbit/s down, which translates to a real world speed of 110-112 mb/s .

Funny you say that because some sites just don't work in librewolf, which is because it is protecting you, but still adds to friction.