Seems like you are moralizing about a guy's house when the topic is simply wifi-reliability.
Given who he is (the creator of https://haveibeenpwned.com/), I would just assume that he have over-provisioned his physical housing capacity in anticipation of a major event. :-)
Seriously, put down the proletariat pitchfork and lets talk about the content. Maybe this is just his warm-up for putting wifi on his superyacht!!!
Sorry for continuing the off-topic thread, but I'd like to point that a system where the non-1% can have big houses is rather more proletariat-friendly than one where only the top elites can.
There's certainly also a moral argument to be made (as you say that I'm moralizing), but I was more alluding to the introductory sentence: "I'm increasingly of the view that both my time and my sanity are worth more and more as the years progress". For me reducing the house size seems like a more effective way of restoring sanity and reducing time needed than installing professional grade equipment, which is kind of insane and time-consuming if you do it yourself for a home.
A big house is more than what is sufficient and thus a waste of resources (space, heating/cooling, building materials, wifi routers, ...). Using up resources has negative outcomes (environmental impact, scarcity, bad work conditions like child work, ...) which are to be avoided.
I guess that it's not that questionable that waste is bad, so the real question is what is sufficient or still allowable.
For that I used European norms of house sizes, where 500 square meters is considered ridiculous.
...and here comes the environment argument. This is a very, very, slippery slope.
By this rationale we should just shut down all datacenters, stop driving, stop eating meat, tell gamers to power off, and go back to hang-drying our hand-washed laundry (even in cold wet places like Sweden). At what point does it stop?
It seems that you believe that you are different from this guy -- having achieved some moral superiority by virtue of "European-ness." But you are not. You are here on HN. You go to work. You take hot showers. You might even eat meat. You take holidays to Thailand or Dominican Republic or other poor countries as many "Europeans" are apt to do. Tell me, what is the social, environmental, political, and blah blah blah cost of that?
Who cares? Enjoy yourself, and try not to kill anyone on your way into the grocery store.
I wouldn't describe it as a slippery slope, but as a discussion point of what is considered excess. Of course you could argue that the bare needs of humans are relatively low, but you can also argue that the needs are pretty high to be able to live a fulfilled life (which is generally what I am thinking).
It's good to shutdown datacenters when they're not needed, but if you need them you need them. It's good not to drive if you don't need to. Luckily I can rely almost totally on public transport but for most people that's not possible so it's okay to use a car. It's good to eat less meat, but also I eat meat because it makes my life better.
> It seems that you believe that you are different from this guy
I'm assuming that I'm not and that life is pretty comparable in the western world, which is why I'm questioning why 500 square meters is excessive here in Europe but not in the USA or Australia.
> having achieved some moral superiority by virtue of "European-ness."
Not really, there are also issues where the US is doing better than Europe (gay marriage, legalisation of drugs)
> Who cares? Enjoy yourself
I think everyone should care about the effects of what they're doing, but everyone also has the right to enjoy themselves. I just don't see how a 500 square meter home helps enjoying yourself.
Given who he is (the creator of https://haveibeenpwned.com/), I would just assume that he have over-provisioned his physical housing capacity in anticipation of a major event. :-)
Seriously, put down the proletariat pitchfork and lets talk about the content. Maybe this is just his warm-up for putting wifi on his superyacht!!!
edit: grammar