units: Arithmetic acrobatics

Thanks to speedtest-cli, I know full well that my landlord has capped each apartment’s access to the Internet at a paltry 60kbps. Thanks to bing, I’m fully aware that the line speed beyond our apartment router is well above that.

What gave me pause today was: At a meager 60kbps, how much data total could be pulled down on a line running 24/7?

After all, some network providers put data caps on their service, even if there isn’t a practical speed cap. (Not so long ago in Japan, I had neither a data nor a real speed cap on a residential fiber-optic line that came in from the street. I miss those days. … 😥 ) Point being, what does 60kbps work out to, in the course of, say, a month?

Enter units.

Well, that’s not terrible. I know some people who pay close to US$100 a month for 20Gb on a wireless hotspot. I suppose I should be grateful, even if it is a trickle. Like slurping frantically at a dribbling faucet in the middle of a desert. … 👿

units is a marvelous tool though. Just about any variation on any kind of data arrangement is neatly calculated, and a terse answer supplied.

The interface is likewise terse, but not so sparse as to be cryptic. And to be honest, the prompts “You have?” and “You want?” are intuitive enough to prevent confusion. I find them nicer than, say, “Input primary data quantity and counter.” That’s just weird.

My only suggestion to the units developers would be a mighty trivial one: Needs more color. 😉

I’ll leave you to play with units, and see what sort of nifty arithmetic acrobatics you can come up with. In the mean time I’ll be aiming aircrack-ng at my neighbor’s wireless router, and massaging it for a password. Hey, two lines at 60kbps is 120kbps total, and 40Gb a month … ! 🙄