I wouldn't worry too much - the chances of this affecting you are minimal. I've upgraded 6 different devices to iOS 7 over the last month (I waited until the 7.0.2 fix for the lock screen/security issues though) and haven't had any problems...this is the first I've heard of any WiFi complaints (and I read quite a lot of Apple stories).
Australian suburbia and US suburbia are pretty damn similar. Especially if you are comparing to Canberra which is lower density than most other Australian cities.
Canberra (being a territory rather than a State and thus getting less representation than the other jurisdictions) actually has fewer politicians than Melbourne or Sydney. Federal parliamentarians are fly-in-, fly-out workers. Few own a home in Canberra. They spend most of their time in their home electorates. On top of that, the ACT's unicameral local legislature is much smaller than State parliaments.
So I don't think pollies really come into this topic. Large areas of Canberra are an internet backwater just like the other capital cities. Luck of the draw, where you live.
Yeah WTF is with Americans (well, the Feds at least) making all their Act names fit some form of tortured acronym. I'm not aware of them doing that in any other country...
It was TransACT VDSL2 in Canberra and my information isn't out of date - it's from this year. You can get similarly priced plans on the 50 Mbps tier on the NBN too. I do understand that's only available in certain areas... I was just relaying my personal experience.
The $20 in the US thing was the main point though - that's complete BS.
I had 60 Mbps VDSL2 in Australia (TransACT, inner south Canberra) for under $60/month. Back here in the US I can only get half that speed (for the same price, approximately).
Sure, my sample size is one, and thus meaningless. But having lived in several different cities in Australia and the US, I can honestly say the situation is no better or worse in either country. In both countries it's the luck of the draw - you could be in a spot with great internet (close to the exchange, or with FTTN/FTTH available)... or in a spot with terrible options (no cable, no fibre, long phone line).
Aussies stuck in bad internet areas love to THINK the situation is so much better in the US, but it really ain't. I've been stuck in a place with 5 Mbps max in Australia (southern suburbs of Brisbane, 4 km+ line length to exchange, no other options), so I know the pain. But I've lived in similar places in the US too (my parents in law for instance, who live in a mid-sized city and have 6 Mbps DSL as their one and only option).
My parents back in Australia are on the NBN now, which makes me quite jealous. Can't get anything close to that where I live in the US currently. FiOS does exist here but is restricted to select cities, mostly on the east and west coasts... I live in the Midwest.
I'm an Australian that moved to the US and I pay more money for less speed here in the US. I moved from a city of 400,000 in Australia to another similarly-sized city in the US so I think the comparison is apt. While the Australian price on your map looks vaguely accurate to me, where did they pull this "$20" for the US from? The only plan you can get here for that kind of money is the lowest-tier DSL (768 kbps or maybe 1.5 Mbps).
I'm not sure that map is comparing apples to apples. Sure you might be able to get a slow DSL plan for $20 here. But I was getting 60 Mbps for around $50 in Australia! Here, the fastest I can get is 30 Mbps, for $60 a month. Fractionally more expensive...but half the speed.
So yeah, I'm disputing the 'Australia is a hell of a lot more expensive' thing. That was true 5-10 years ago. Not these days. Australia also has a lot more competition (almost everyone has ~dozens~ of ISPs to choose from, whereas here it's basically two choices - the local DSL monopoly and the local cable monopoly... FiOS only if you're very lucky).
Which, sadly, is at least partly due to another factor of American life: the only OECD nation to have no legally mandated minimum annual leave/vacation days.
Sure some jobs offer a decent number of days, but only after you've worked at the company for quite a long time, and even then, typically fewer than almost every other developed country. The result is that Americans don't travel to nearly the extent that Europeans/East Asians/Australians/New Zealanders do. So a high proportion of Americans really do have "nothing to compare to".
I say this as someone, who had more paid days off working an unskilled job in a supermarket as a teenager in Australia, as he does now working in a highly-skilled position in a massive global software company in the US. (And I actually worked for the same company in Australia, before transferring to the US - moving to exactly the same position in the US saw me lose almost two weeks of vacation a year and came with a pay cut to boot!)
I'm not sure about that. I don't think it's States, nor the size of the US that is responsible. For instance, Australia has both States, and is the same size as the US (geographically speaking, not population-wise), and does not suffer the same issues as the US does. Not to say the broadband situation is ideal in Australia - but access IS cheaper and almost everyone has dozens of providers to choose from, except in the smallest of towns.
The key difference is that the law requires the monopoly infrastructure owners (the company that owns the physical lines to people's houses, which in most cases is Telstra) to wholesale access to that infrastructure to other companies. This is in fact mentioned in TFA (in the context of the UK, not Australia, but same principle):
"Rick Karr, who made a PBS documentary in which he travelled to the UK to find out why prices were lower, says that the critical moment came when the British regulator Ofcom forced British Telecom to allow other companies to use its copper telephone wires going to and from homes."
In the US, if you want to compete, you have to roll out your own infrastructure. That is prohibitively expensive for anyone except a couple of large companies. To me, that is by far the most significant factor in explaining the differences. There are other factors, sure, but that right there is #1.
It's worth noting that due to competition laws, most Australians living in cities and towns have a LOT of ISP options. Not just the 2-3 options available in many areas in the US but typically 20+ choices of ADSL provider. The owner of the telephone lines is required to wholesale access to any third party that wants it.
There's nothing wrong with a cap provided you provide options.
A cap of 'x' GB that is the only option offered is indeed limiting communication and information. However, if an ISP offers a range of caps at different price points, and includes a high-end unlimited (or really-high-multi-TB cap) plan, I don't see an issue. Technically every connection has a cap (i.e. the amount downloaded if you maxed out the connection for a month). That means ISPs have little incentive to upgrade their speeds. But if data transfer limits are a separate concept from the speed/bandwidth of the connection, ISPs may have more reason to upgrade speeds.
I'd rather a super-fast connection that artificially caps me to 300 GB/month, than a slower connection that could only download 300 GB/month if I maxed it out 24/7/31. Because you aren't downloading all the time, but when you are, you want what you are downloading ASAP. The impact on the network (over a large enough pool of people) is the same in either case, but the former provides a better user experience.
a) iiNet is by no means a 'cheap' ISP. There are cheaper ISPs than that out there (though, you often get what you pay for in terms of network quality and reliability);
b) Some Australian ISPs do offer unlimited plans. However, for all but the most heavy users, they are overkill. I mean really, there's probably not any practical difference between, say, Internode's 1.2 TB/month plan and an unlimited plan.
c) Most ISPs have file mirrors and other exclusions from the cap, often quite generous. E.g. data from Steam/iTunes Store/iView/etc. doesn't count towards the cap. The local file mirrors will also carry most commonly downloaded software, patches etc. so that you don't have to incur usage for that stuff.
Well the three drives I bought have bee great. All 3 are still going strong and the oldest is around 3 years old.
Not that my sample size of 3 drives really means much. I think that the general consensus is that they are pretty good, though not as good as the reliability leaders Intel and Samsung. Incidentally, Corsair, G.Skill and Mushkin drives are all pretty much the same under the hood (just rebranded) and enjoy similar reliability.
Yep, I think that's right. I had an early OCZ drive blow up on me quite a few years ago and never bought another since. I have bought several SSDs from Corsair and most recently Samsung instead.
First impressions often matter, especially when the industry itself (SSDs) is new.
I've noticed that most seats on North American airlines don't do this. The back just leans back and... that's it. But OP isn't making it up. On most planes in other places, this is in fact how it works. When you recline your seat, the back leans back, but the bottom moves (horizontally) forward at the same time. It's a reasonably substantial movement too - you can feel it move underneath you, much like if you've used slid your car seat forward an inch or two. It changes the shape of the space available to the person behind, but it ends up being around the same amount of physical space (though they may have to keep their legs down a bit flatter.
Almost every flight I've taken in Asia and Australia has seats that do this. But having recently moved to the US (and I fly thousands of miles a week for work), now that you mention it, I think you're right. The seats here don't seem to work that way. But I didn't really notice/realised it until I saw this post.
Hmm you must have issues travelling long distances. I regularly fly between Australia and the US and since I can't sleep on planes and since you usually arrive first thing in the morning at the destination, it's usually approximately 30-36 hours awake total. I'm tired, sure, but not experiencing those kind of symptoms.
That seems high...I live in a country with universal health care. The universal health care system is funded by a 1.5% levy on your taxable income (i.e. your tax bracket is 1.5% higher than it otherwise would be if the system didn't exist). The system covers most (though not all) medical expenses you will incur.
There are some out of pocket expenses, sure, but that's unlikely to account for 18.5% more of your income unless you make very little money.
I've had contractors in Australia that just ask for payment via direct electronic transfer (i.e. they give you a BSB + account number). But most have the mobile EFTPOS/card terminals these days I think.
I used to think like you, but once you get a credit card that has perks like free travel/car rental insurance, X% cashback on purchases etc etc. I realised credit cards can be a good deal. But only if:
- It's a zero-fee card (no annual fee); and - You have the discipline to ensure it's paid off each month so you incur no interest.
(Additional point relevant only to the US: keeping a credit card or two open helps build your credit score too. This is not a concern in other countries like Australia that work on a negative credit reporting system rather than a positive one).
As an Australian who moved to the US this year, I agree. I was shocked that:
1. Cheques/checks are still actually used. Prior to moving to the US I had never written or cashed a cheque. I don't think I've even ~seen~ one in Australia since the early 90s.
2. There is no simple, quick way to pay other people electronically (regular individuals, not companies). In Australia you just log into your internet banking, click "transfer, to 'other bank account', type recipient's account number and hit send). Works from anyone, to anyone and has no fees. Giving your account number out is not a problem - it's not secret information and the only thing you can do with it is deposit money, not withdraw. You can kinda do electronic transfers with some US banks but it requires you to set up a 'link' between the accounts first or only works to/from certain banks. For ad hoc payments to strangers, you're stuck with using cash or a check (slow!) in the US. There are wire transfers but they have large fees and are slow as hell.
3. There is no universal bill payment system similar to Bpay. Back in Australia, all my bills were paid in the same way: log in to internet banking, select "pay bill", type in the biller code and customer reference number printed on the bill, send, done. Electricity, internet, rent, traffic fines, insurance... any bill was payable this way. In the US you can pay things online but only by going to a different place for each bill (utilities provider's website to pay utilities, some other online payment system from my internet, etc etc.)
Americans by and large that I've talked about this with seem oblivious just how backwards their banking system is compared to everywhere else in the developed world. They point to third party services like Paypal and Square as equivalents, but they really aren't. They are slower, often have fees, involve a third party, and aren't universal. I like living in the US in most respects but God, dealing with money drives me nuts. It's like the 1970s again.
It's not just 'one freaking website'. There's a HUGE backend with financials, a full customer management system, integrations with dozens of other systems and data sources etc. The public facing website part of it is like 5% of the work, if that.
As someone currently working on the implementation of a State-based exchange (in one of the 14 States taking that path), I agree. We have our own issues with the project and not everything was working correctly on go-live date. However, in comparison to the Federal exchange site, we are doing pretty well.
The big issues we have faced are:
1. Complexity - these exchanges need to integrate with half a dozen other State and Federal systems (e.g. Federal data hub to pull IRS/tax data) all with wildly differing data models and using different technologies. So the software stack is pretty massive. Lots of integration and data transformation work which is always tricky.
2. Continually moving goalposts (i.e. requirements). Seriously, the government was still asking for things to be changed less than a week before go-live. And if something is politically important, then no amount of "that's not a good idea" on the part of developers and PMs is going to help.
Having recently moved to the US (from Australia) I have discovered that American expectations about car longevity are different than in the rest of the world.
I drove a car manufactured in 1981 Honda until 2007 (not far shy of its 26th 'birthday'). I drove it to the wrecking yard on the last day I owned it (i.e. it still ran fine and was registered and roadworthy - I scrapped it only because it was worth almost as much in scrap metal as it would have been to sell as a car). This was not atypical and you see many 20-30 year old vehicles on the road in Australia.
Moved to the US and have noticed that the average age of cars is a lot less. I have mentioned this to a few people and had some interesting discussions. The reason is a combination of the following:
1. In my area of the Midwest at least, they use road salt in the winter to melt snow and ice. Salt + water is not a good combination and cars tend to develop rust quicker than they otherwise would. This seems to be the primary reason that comes up when I ask why cars here fall apart so quickly. My father in law has a 12 year old truck that has huge rust spots in it... looks more like a 30 year old vehicle to me!
2. Cars in the US are cheap. When I moved here I bought a new car for just under $30k that would have cost close to $46k in Australia. So buying a new vehicle (vs. keeping your old vehicle) becomes cost competitive earlier than it would in places with more expensive cars. Most people seem to finance their car here (another difference compared to Australia where most people buy them outright) which, combined with ridiculously low (lower than inflation!) interest rates makes new car ownership possible for a much wider segment of the population.
3. In the US states I've spent time in at least, they don't have roadworthiness tests when you get the registration renewed. In many other places the car has to go in for safety and roadworthiness inspection on a regular basis otherwise they won't register it (this varies by country/jurisdiction but it can range from 'compulsory check every year' to 'random chance of requiring inspection for cars over 10 years old' to anything in between). So it's not surprising to observe that on the whole, people don't maintain their cars here as well as I'm use to. And they will tend to fall apart earlier in life (or develop problems that could be fixed, but the owner simply decides 'screw it, I'll buy a new one').
Anyway yeah, I think it's fair to say that Americans expect a car to last 10 years without serious issues. But beyond that it starts getting iffy. In Australia OTOH I think people see ~15-20 years as the benchmark.
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't worry too much - the chances of this affecting you are minimal. I've upgraded 6 different devices to iOS 7 over the last month (I waited until the 7.0.2 fix for the lock screen/security issues though) and haven't had any problems...this is the first I've heard of any WiFi complaints (and I read quite a lot of Apple stories).
Australian suburbia and US suburbia are pretty damn similar. Especially if you are comparing to Canberra which is lower density than most other Australian cities.
Canberra (being a territory rather than a State and thus getting less representation than the other jurisdictions) actually has fewer politicians than Melbourne or Sydney. Federal parliamentarians are fly-in-, fly-out workers. Few own a home in Canberra. They spend most of their time in their home electorates. On top of that, the ACT's unicameral local legislature is much smaller than State parliaments.
So I don't think pollies really come into this topic. Large areas of Canberra are an internet backwater just like the other capital cities. Luck of the draw, where you live.
Yeah WTF is with Americans (well, the Feds at least) making all their Act names fit some form of tortured acronym. I'm not aware of them doing that in any other country...
Blame family. :)
It was TransACT VDSL2 in Canberra and my information isn't out of date - it's from this year. You can get similarly priced plans on the 50 Mbps tier on the NBN too. I do understand that's only available in certain areas ... I was just relaying my personal experience.
The $20 in the US thing was the main point though - that's complete BS.
I had 60 Mbps VDSL2 in Australia (TransACT, inner south Canberra) for under $60/month. Back here in the US I can only get half that speed (for the same price, approximately).
Sure, my sample size is one, and thus meaningless. But having lived in several different cities in Australia and the US, I can honestly say the situation is no better or worse in either country. In both countries it's the luck of the draw - you could be in a spot with great internet (close to the exchange, or with FTTN/FTTH available) ... or in a spot with terrible options (no cable, no fibre, long phone line).
Aussies stuck in bad internet areas love to THINK the situation is so much better in the US, but it really ain't. I've been stuck in a place with 5 Mbps max in Australia (southern suburbs of Brisbane, 4 km+ line length to exchange, no other options), so I know the pain. But I've lived in similar places in the US too (my parents in law for instance, who live in a mid-sized city and have 6 Mbps DSL as their one and only option).
My parents back in Australia are on the NBN now, which makes me quite jealous. Can't get anything close to that where I live in the US currently. FiOS does exist here but is restricted to select cities, mostly on the east and west coasts ... I live in the Midwest.
What the ...
I'm an Australian that moved to the US and I pay more money for less speed here in the US. I moved from a city of 400,000 in Australia to another similarly-sized city in the US so I think the comparison is apt. While the Australian price on your map looks vaguely accurate to me, where did they pull this "$20" for the US from? The only plan you can get here for that kind of money is the lowest-tier DSL (768 kbps or maybe 1.5 Mbps).
I'm not sure that map is comparing apples to apples. Sure you might be able to get a slow DSL plan for $20 here. But I was getting 60 Mbps for around $50 in Australia! Here, the fastest I can get is 30 Mbps, for $60 a month. Fractionally more expensive...but half the speed.
So yeah, I'm disputing the 'Australia is a hell of a lot more expensive' thing. That was true 5-10 years ago. Not these days. Australia also has a lot more competition (almost everyone has ~dozens~ of ISPs to choose from, whereas here it's basically two choices - the local DSL monopoly and the local cable monopoly ... FiOS only if you're very lucky).
Which, sadly, is at least partly due to another factor of American life: the only OECD nation to have no legally mandated minimum annual leave/vacation days.
Sure some jobs offer a decent number of days, but only after you've worked at the company for quite a long time, and even then, typically fewer than almost every other developed country. The result is that Americans don't travel to nearly the extent that Europeans/East Asians/Australians/New Zealanders do. So a high proportion of Americans really do have "nothing to compare to".
I say this as someone, who had more paid days off working an unskilled job in a supermarket as a teenager in Australia, as he does now working in a highly-skilled position in a massive global software company in the US. (And I actually worked for the same company in Australia, before transferring to the US - moving to exactly the same position in the US saw me lose almost two weeks of vacation a year and came with a pay cut to boot!)
I'm not sure about that. I don't think it's States, nor the size of the US that is responsible. For instance, Australia has both States, and is the same size as the US (geographically speaking, not population-wise), and does not suffer the same issues as the US does. Not to say the broadband situation is ideal in Australia - but access IS cheaper and almost everyone has dozens of providers to choose from, except in the smallest of towns.
The key difference is that the law requires the monopoly infrastructure owners (the company that owns the physical lines to people's houses, which in most cases is Telstra) to wholesale access to that infrastructure to other companies. This is in fact mentioned in TFA (in the context of the UK, not Australia, but same principle):
"Rick Karr, who made a PBS documentary in which he travelled to the UK to find out why prices were lower, says that the critical moment came when the British regulator Ofcom forced British Telecom to allow other companies to use its copper telephone wires going to and from homes."
In the US, if you want to compete, you have to roll out your own infrastructure. That is prohibitively expensive for anyone except a couple of large companies. To me, that is by far the most significant factor in explaining the differences. There are other factors, sure, but that right there is #1.
Well to give a couple of examples of plans in Australia (looking at DSL plans, rather than fibre or cable):
Example of a cheaper ISP: http://www.tpg.com.au/products_services/adsl2-standalone
Examples of a higher-end ISP (generally better network/less contention/better customer service):
http://www.internode.on.net/residential/adsl_broadband/easy_broadband/
http://www.iinet.net.au/internet/broadband/naked-dsl/
It's worth noting that due to competition laws, most Australians living in cities and towns have a LOT of ISP options. Not just the 2-3 options available in many areas in the US but typically 20+ choices of ADSL provider. The owner of the telephone lines is required to wholesale access to any third party that wants it.
There's nothing wrong with a cap provided you provide options.
A cap of 'x' GB that is the only option offered is indeed limiting communication and information. However, if an ISP offers a range of caps at different price points, and includes a high-end unlimited (or really-high-multi-TB cap) plan, I don't see an issue. Technically every connection has a cap (i.e. the amount downloaded if you maxed out the connection for a month). That means ISPs have little incentive to upgrade their speeds. But if data transfer limits are a separate concept from the speed/bandwidth of the connection, ISPs may have more reason to upgrade speeds.
I'd rather a super-fast connection that artificially caps me to 300 GB/month, than a slower connection that could only download 300 GB/month if I maxed it out 24/7/31. Because you aren't downloading all the time, but when you are, you want what you are downloading ASAP. The impact on the network (over a large enough pool of people) is the same in either case, but the former provides a better user experience.
Should probably point out in addition that:
a) iiNet is by no means a 'cheap' ISP. There are cheaper ISPs than that out there (though, you often get what you pay for in terms of network quality and reliability);
b) Some Australian ISPs do offer unlimited plans. However, for all but the most heavy users, they are overkill. I mean really, there's probably not any practical difference between, say, Internode's 1.2 TB/month plan and an unlimited plan.
c) Most ISPs have file mirrors and other exclusions from the cap, often quite generous. E.g. data from Steam/iTunes Store/iView/etc. doesn't count towards the cap. The local file mirrors will also carry most commonly downloaded software, patches etc. so that you don't have to incur usage for that stuff.
Well the three drives I bought have bee great. All 3 are still going strong and the oldest is around 3 years old.
Not that my sample size of 3 drives really means much. I think that the general consensus is that they are pretty good, though not as good as the reliability leaders Intel and Samsung. Incidentally, Corsair, G.Skill and Mushkin drives are all pretty much the same under the hood (just rebranded) and enjoy similar reliability.
Yep, I think that's right. I had an early OCZ drive blow up on me quite a few years ago and never bought another since. I have bought several SSDs from Corsair and most recently Samsung instead.
First impressions often matter, especially when the industry itself (SSDs) is new.
I've noticed that most seats on North American airlines don't do this. The back just leans back and ... that's it. But OP isn't making it up. On most planes in other places, this is in fact how it works. When you recline your seat, the back leans back, but the bottom moves (horizontally) forward at the same time. It's a reasonably substantial movement too - you can feel it move underneath you, much like if you've used slid your car seat forward an inch or two. It changes the shape of the space available to the person behind, but it ends up being around the same amount of physical space (though they may have to keep their legs down a bit flatter.
Almost every flight I've taken in Asia and Australia has seats that do this. But having recently moved to the US (and I fly thousands of miles a week for work), now that you mention it, I think you're right. The seats here don't seem to work that way. But I didn't really notice/realised it until I saw this post.
Hmm you must have issues travelling long distances. I regularly fly between Australia and the US and since I can't sleep on planes and since you usually arrive first thing in the morning at the destination, it's usually approximately 30-36 hours awake total. I'm tired, sure, but not experiencing those kind of symptoms.
That seems high...I live in a country with universal health care. The universal health care system is funded by a 1.5% levy on your taxable income (i.e. your tax bracket is 1.5% higher than it otherwise would be if the system didn't exist). The system covers most (though not all) medical expenses you will incur.
There are some out of pocket expenses, sure, but that's unlikely to account for 18.5% more of your income unless you make very little money.
I've had contractors in Australia that just ask for payment via direct electronic transfer (i.e. they give you a BSB + account number). But most have the mobile EFTPOS/card terminals these days I think.
I used to think like you, but once you get a credit card that has perks like free travel/car rental insurance, X% cashback on purchases etc etc. I realised credit cards can be a good deal. But only if:
- It's a zero-fee card (no annual fee); and
- You have the discipline to ensure it's paid off each month so you incur no interest.
(Additional point relevant only to the US: keeping a credit card or two open helps build your credit score too. This is not a concern in other countries like Australia that work on a negative credit reporting system rather than a positive one).
As an Australian who moved to the US this year, I agree. I was shocked that:
1. Cheques/checks are still actually used. Prior to moving to the US I had never written or cashed a cheque. I don't think I've even ~seen~ one in Australia since the early 90s.
2. There is no simple, quick way to pay other people electronically (regular individuals, not companies). In Australia you just log into your internet banking, click "transfer, to 'other bank account', type recipient's account number and hit send). Works from anyone, to anyone and has no fees. Giving your account number out is not a problem - it's not secret information and the only thing you can do with it is deposit money, not withdraw. You can kinda do electronic transfers with some US banks but it requires you to set up a 'link' between the accounts first or only works to/from certain banks. For ad hoc payments to strangers, you're stuck with using cash or a check (slow!) in the US. There are wire transfers but they have large fees and are slow as hell.
3. There is no universal bill payment system similar to Bpay. Back in Australia, all my bills were paid in the same way: log in to internet banking, select "pay bill", type in the biller code and customer reference number printed on the bill, send, done. Electricity, internet, rent, traffic fines, insurance ... any bill was payable this way. In the US you can pay things online but only by going to a different place for each bill (utilities provider's website to pay utilities, some other online payment system from my internet, etc etc.)
Americans by and large that I've talked about this with seem oblivious just how backwards their banking system is compared to everywhere else in the developed world. They point to third party services like Paypal and Square as equivalents, but they really aren't. They are slower, often have fees, involve a third party, and aren't universal. I like living in the US in most respects but God, dealing with money drives me nuts. It's like the 1970s again.
It's not just 'one freaking website'. There's a HUGE backend with financials, a full customer management system, integrations with dozens of other systems and data sources etc. The public facing website part of it is like 5% of the work, if that.
As someone currently working on the implementation of a State-based exchange (in one of the 14 States taking that path), I agree. We have our own issues with the project and not everything was working correctly on go-live date. However, in comparison to the Federal exchange site, we are doing pretty well.
The big issues we have faced are:
1. Complexity - these exchanges need to integrate with half a dozen other State and Federal systems (e.g. Federal data hub to pull IRS/tax data) all with wildly differing data models and using different technologies. So the software stack is pretty massive. Lots of integration and data transformation work which is always tricky.
2. Continually moving goalposts (i.e. requirements). Seriously, the government was still asking for things to be changed less than a week before go-live. And if something is politically important, then no amount of "that's not a good idea" on the part of developers and PMs is going to help.
Having recently moved to the US (from Australia) I have discovered that American expectations about car longevity are different than in the rest of the world.
I drove a car manufactured in 1981 Honda until 2007 (not far shy of its 26th 'birthday'). I drove it to the wrecking yard on the last day I owned it (i.e. it still ran fine and was registered and roadworthy - I scrapped it only because it was worth almost as much in scrap metal as it would have been to sell as a car). This was not atypical and you see many 20-30 year old vehicles on the road in Australia.
Moved to the US and have noticed that the average age of cars is a lot less. I have mentioned this to a few people and had some interesting discussions. The reason is a combination of the following:
1. In my area of the Midwest at least, they use road salt in the winter to melt snow and ice. Salt + water is not a good combination and cars tend to develop rust quicker than they otherwise would. This seems to be the primary reason that comes up when I ask why cars here fall apart so quickly. My father in law has a 12 year old truck that has huge rust spots in it ... looks more like a 30 year old vehicle to me!
2. Cars in the US are cheap. When I moved here I bought a new car for just under $30k that would have cost close to $46k in Australia. So buying a new vehicle (vs. keeping your old vehicle) becomes cost competitive earlier than it would in places with more expensive cars. Most people seem to finance their car here (another difference compared to Australia where most people buy them outright) which, combined with ridiculously low (lower than inflation!) interest rates makes new car ownership possible for a much wider segment of the population.
3. In the US states I've spent time in at least, they don't have roadworthiness tests when you get the registration renewed. In many other places the car has to go in for safety and roadworthiness inspection on a regular basis otherwise they won't register it (this varies by country/jurisdiction but it can range from 'compulsory check every year' to 'random chance of requiring inspection for cars over 10 years old' to anything in between). So it's not surprising to observe that on the whole, people don't maintain their cars here as well as I'm use to. And they will tend to fall apart earlier in life (or develop problems that could be fixed, but the owner simply decides 'screw it, I'll buy a new one').
Anyway yeah, I think it's fair to say that Americans expect a car to last 10 years without serious issues. But beyond that it starts getting iffy. In Australia OTOH I think people see ~15-20 years as the benchmark.
Then you probably shouldn't have bought an online, multiplayer game.