Why does it matter that much? Pretty much every single large company that is changing the world (for better or worse) is run by a egotistical psychopathic billionaire. Elon just happens to be more...
Why does it matter that much? Pretty much every single large company that is changing the world (for better or worse) is run by a egotistical psychopathic billionaire. Elon just happens to be more outspoken than the rest of them, but Jeff Bezos, Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, etc think that we're all bugs that are annoying them while they try to achieve their legacies. Musk is just a part of the crowd. Don't let him single-handedly ruin the extraordinary achievements of the SpaceX, Tesla, etc engineers and scientists.
Because, unlike the others, Musk actively and successfully cultivates followers who agree with his awful beliefs? It matters to me because Musk is a transphobic piece of garbage. Similarly, if the...
Because, unlike the others, Musk actively and successfully cultivates followers who agree with his awful beliefs?
It matters to me because Musk is a transphobic piece of garbage. Similarly, if the literal nazi party were still around and learned cool new biology stuff by vivisecting humans, I would allow my distaste for nazis to overwhelm my enthusiasm for science.
I assume that you’re trying to be comforting with your comment, overall …? But — not speaking for OP, and more on a personal note — some people prefer observing, feeling, and maybe acting, when a perceived injustice occurs. Don’t let their expressed morals dissuade you from your own feelings, but note that it’s very important to them even if it isn’t equivalently so for you.
I understand having extreme distaste for Elon himself, but you also have to understand that all of the billionaire class are fascist corrupt murdering monsters right? Companies like Coca Cola...
I understand having extreme distaste for Elon himself, but you also have to understand that all of the billionaire class are fascist corrupt murdering monsters right? Companies like Coca Cola literally murdered hundreds to thousands of people for daring to stand up to them in South America. Amazon has singlehandedly destroyed the lives of millions of people and forced them to work menial jobs and piss in bottles or die (many people chose death, one of my friends included)
I really don't understand why people are perfectly fine ignoring those things but draw the line at the Twitter lunatic who clowns around with donald trump. Jeff Bezos and pals may not have a cult of personality like musk does (or at least not as widespread of one) but I don't believe for a moment that they've done any less harm to the world, and honestly for most of them I believe they've done MUCH MORE harm than musk.
Every single thread where Space X/Tesla/Starlink announces an incredible achievement born off the blood, sweat, and tears of thousands of hard working people; the most anyone ever wants to say is "ugh I hate Elon Musk" and it's downright exhausting. It's not productive or relevant to the discussion and all it does is minimize and dismiss the magic that these people are working so hard to achieve.
We're talking about cell-phone coverage for the entire earth, no fancy phone required. This is life changing technology for some people, assuming they can pull it off and it won't be extortionately expensive. To brush aside this kind of leap forward with a throwaway lazy comment about the owner of the company is infuriating.
I’m sorry about your friend. And agreed that this will keep happening as long as billionaires and corporations continue existing; all of them are complicit. I disagree that people are consciously...
I’m sorry about your friend. And agreed that this will keep happening as long as billionaires and corporations continue existing; all of them are complicit.
I disagree that people are consciously drawing that line. Most aren’t aware, and those that are might have too much on their mental plate to be able to focus on the problem given that it’s ever present. If the only thing someone can accomplish is pointing out that a problem exists, that still seems worthwhile to me, even if it doesn’t for you.
And for what it’s worth, when threads like these come up for other massive companies, people do point out how atrocious they are. It’s just that Chiquita isn’t expanding the frontiers of scientific knowledge, they’re organizing coups across dozens of countries for cheap bananas. So there’s no reason for positivity in the slightest.
No one is trying to minimize these accomplishments, they’re telling other people how they make them feel (or at least, that’s what I would be doing). Agreed that it could be worded more productively for a discussion, but pointing out the source of a work is useful for people who don’t have context. And honestly, people should be free to say how they feel.
I’m also sorry that it feels like people are attacking the genuinely skilled, passionate people who are working on these projects; I assume they are just attacking Musk (which I presume we can all get behind), and relating their personal experiences.
Apologies; I don’t this digression has been productive. I’d imagine that you want to continue discussing there actual technical accomplishment at hand, so I’ll stop with this thread.
You’ve used the phrase “I don’t understand” and asked “why does it matter so much”; so in sum, it matters to me because I point this out everywhere anyways, and I understand perfectly well that our entire economic system is designed to either turn us against each other or kill us all. Hopefully those are straightforward enough answers.
I apologize for getting testy there, it's not the first time the only comment chain in a thread like this has just been a discussion about what new evil thing elon has done recently. I respect...
I apologize for getting testy there, it's not the first time the only comment chain in a thread like this has just been a discussion about what new evil thing elon has done recently. I respect people having those opinions, or even those discussions; it's just frustrating when they always seem to happen solely in unrelated threads.
I also respect the user base of tildes too much to believe that we have to preface every single discussion about a spaceX topic with the fact that we hate elon musk just in case everyone wasn't on the same page. As if we haven't focused enough on the atrocities going on in the world right now. There's power in infamy, and I prefer to not contribute to it when I don't have to.
It's pretty difficult to become a billionaire without completely losing your humanity. I'm sure there are exceptions out there, but the vast majority of them are monsters. Even the "respected"...
It's pretty difficult to become a billionaire without completely losing your humanity. I'm sure there are exceptions out there, but the vast majority of them are monsters. Even the "respected" ones just have better PR firms.
I don’t know any billionaires and neither do you, presumably. Seems like that’s more an ideological article of faith than a fact. What does “completely losing your humanity” even mean?
I don’t know any billionaires and neither do you, presumably. Seems like that’s more an ideological article of faith than a fact. What does “completely losing your humanity” even mean?
I don't know them personally, but I know their deeds and I know it's basically impossible to accumulate that level of wealth without abusing thousands of people? It's not just elon or bezos, the...
I don't know them personally, but I know their deeds and I know it's basically impossible to accumulate that level of wealth without abusing thousands of people? It's not just elon or bezos, the investment banker billionaires have destroyed this country's working class. The oil industry billionaires have destroyed the environment. The military industrial complex billionaires have orchestrated the death of millions of people by starting wars to enrich themselves. The pharma billionaires started the opioid crisis by bribing doctors to over-prescribe life-destroying drugs. The insurance billionaires have denied and overcharged for life-saving procedures and medicines to save them a buck. The telecommunications billionaires destroyed our privacy and sold us out to the NSA and FBI.
I'm confused, is this a controversial take or something? Do you think these kinds of things just happens on their own?
It’s a very common take but it’s just generic anti-capitalist ideology. Do you think the reason Beyoncé got to $760 million (estimated) is because she abuses people? Will she need to abuse people...
It’s a very common take but it’s just generic anti-capitalist ideology.
Do you think the reason Beyoncé got to $760 million (estimated) is because she abuses people? Will she need to abuse people to get to a billion, or just keep being a popular singer? When she gets to a billion, are you then going to look for reasons why actually, she has “lost her humanity” and is evil now?
It does require extreme popularity to get to that kind of money, but some products are very popular and wealth snowballs. It’s not fair but that’s just kind of how it works. There are billions of people willing to spend money on something they like, and sometimes they all decide to buy the same things, or buy them the same way, so that’s where the money flows.
So yes, in a sense, I do think extreme wealth can just kind of happen, because sometimes there are no brakes. It’s a similar mechanism as posts going viral, and it happens more easily for virtual goods.
It’s also true that businesses in many industries have made a lot of money by doing all sorts of terrible things, but the idea that it’s not possible for extreme wealth to happen any other way is a sort of wishful thinking by people who want simple rules to decide who to hate.
I mean... yes? And this was just the first thing that came to my head, I'm sure there's much more than just the abusing of sweatshop labor in Sir Lanka. I get the argument, but celebrities are...
Do you think the reason Beyoncé got to $760 million (estimated) is because she abuses people?
I mean... yes? And this was just the first thing that came to my head, I'm sure there's much more than just the abusing of sweatshop labor in Sir Lanka.
I get the argument, but celebrities are rarely billionaires, and they don't make even make up a tiny minority of the people I was calling out in my comment. Highlighting the very rare exception and not even providing an actual billionaire like Taylor Swift is just odd.
See, this is the sort of thing that happens to celebrities. Linking their name to anything, good or bad, sells newspapers. If a singer didn’t do anything wrong themselves, they can dig for abuse...
See, this is the sort of thing that happens to celebrities. Linking their name to anything, good or bad, sells newspapers. If a singer didn’t do anything wrong themselves, they can dig for abuse happening somewhere in the supply chain for their merchandise. It’s not all bad, since it’s a news hook for an article about sweatshops, but Beyoncé is not the reason why there are sweatshops in Sri Lanka.
How much do you police your supply chain? If you don’t do that, have you lost your humanity?
(To be clear, I think it’s good for people to be aware of where the stuff they buy comes from and to try to use more ethical sourcing, but not doing that doesn’t make you evil, it just means you’re not being as careful as you could be.)
I don't have to police my supply chain because I'm not selling $5,000 handbags that cost $4.50 to make. And funnily enough neither are any of the people I know and respect. But you're right I...
I don't have to police my supply chain because I'm not selling $5,000 handbags that cost $4.50 to make. And funnily enough neither are any of the people I know and respect. But you're right I should empathize with the soon-to-be billionaire because she totally didn't know that her company employed modern day slaves. It may have been reported to sell clicks, but it still happened.
And even then, you continue to focus on the tiny fraction of a percent of (not even) billionaires who just so happened to be lucky enough (or more likely nepotismed into) fame and fortune. What about all of the real billionaires I mentioned in my original comments? Maybe they also just got smeared as a hook in the newspaper for hiring death squads in Columbia to assassinate union leaders.
It seems like you're the one making claims about billionaires as a class, not me? My argument is that we don't actually know much about most rich businesspeople (Beyonce included), and you keep...
It seems like you're the one making claims about billionaires as a class, not me? My argument is that we don't actually know much about most rich businesspeople (Beyonce included), and you keep saying that, actually, you do know all about them. But based on what?
tiny fraction of a percent
I don't think you made a spreadsheet and calculated this. You're not citing a study. Such a study couldn't be done by reading the news because most people don't appear in the news. Finding more news stories about good or bad billionaires wouldn't tell us about the denominator in a percentage calculation.
Where does your confidence come from? Why do you find skepticism about your anti-capitalist beliefs so threatening that you're hurling more overheated rhetoric at me for raising doubts?
I raise doubts about these things because I'm against dehumanizing people based on which class they're in. There are a lot of things going on in the world that I don't like, but I think that's going too far.
Do I really need to explain why I think Elon is worse than other billionaires? Yes, they are all bad but I would hope it would be clear that the richest man in the world also being red pilled and...
Do I really need to explain why I think Elon is worse than other billionaires? Yes, they are all bad but I would hope it would be clear that the richest man in the world also being red pilled and working as a stooge for Trump is worse than most billionaires.
If this can reach any place on earth with good speed it makes me wonder if it's worth wiring up the world (though we've gotten pretty far so far.) This got me pretty hyped for the future of...
If this can reach any place on earth with good speed it makes me wonder if it's worth wiring up the world (though we've gotten pretty far so far.) This got me pretty hyped for the future of satcom, but eh, I hope we don't forget about Kessler
p.s. I'll be noise, but can we keep the misery to ~society? Y'all bringing reddit to my tildes :P
I'd imagine we're still going to have fibre optics/wires running everywhere. Starlink has limits on the number of subscribers per km^2 due to physics reasons (bandwidth + beam forming...
If this can reach any place on earth with good speed it makes me wonder if it's worth wiring up the world (though we've gotten pretty far so far.) This got me pretty hyped for the future of satcom, but eh, I hope we don't forget about Kessler
I'd imagine we're still going to have fibre optics/wires running everywhere. Starlink has limits on the number of subscribers per km^2 due to physics reasons (bandwidth + beam forming limitations), so if you want a quick and reliable internet connection especially in an urban area, you'll want to connect via hard line.
That said, as long as some competitors can spring up, this could make a decent argument against building out rural ISPs in some situations.
p.s. I'll be noise, but can we keep the misery to ~society? Y'all bringing reddit to my tildes :P
People have cracked reddit-esque jokes in some more serious threads I've written in; ignoring them and not upvoting is all I've been doing. Feel free to label the comment as "Offtopic" or "Noise" if you don't feel it's useful to the conversation at hand.
Yeah, I doubt this will ever replace hardwired internet for most homes in America that have cheap access to it; but this will revolutionize (kill) the satellite phone market, and drastically...
Yeah, I doubt this will ever replace hardwired internet for most homes in America that have cheap access to it; but this will revolutionize (kill) the satellite phone market, and drastically reduce the need for cellphone towers in less populated areas. It'll still mean a big reduction in physical infrastructure throughout the world; especially for countries who haven't already invested trillions of dollars in telecom infrastructure. Lots of people in Asian countries have a cellphone as their only computer, it's pretty reasonable to think that is the model of other developing cultures as well.
I really like the idea that this essentially kills roaming. But it seems from the details, also because Starlink isn't a mobile network provider, they do communicate with local providers.
I really like the idea that this essentially kills roaming. But it seems from the details, also because Starlink isn't a mobile network provider, they do communicate with local providers.
This is exactly the problem though. You can't have multiple competitors blanketing the earth in these satellites, the aforementioned Kessler Syndrome. This isn't even exactly unique to...
That said, as long as some competitors can spring up
This is exactly the problem though. You can't have multiple competitors blanketing the earth in these satellites, the aforementioned Kessler Syndrome. This isn't even exactly unique to space....there's a reason we don't have dozens of power companies running dozens of electrical cables running proprietary and different competing standards.
If this gets traction, Starlink becomes a monopoly in rural areas. If not for the above reason....good luck convincing SpaceX to give you an affordable contract to launch your competing network.
This all still heavily relies on ground equipment to work, kessler is still a major concern, and ground based systems like cell towers and physical wired connections will always be faster and...
This all still heavily relies on ground equipment to work, kessler is still a major concern, and ground based systems like cell towers and physical wired connections will always be faster and cheaper.
Pretty much every improvement to satellite equipment will also apply to ground based radio communications and it will work better because it's 100km closer than a satellite.
I'd love to have a better idea as to how it works (how are they getting a much higher range than a conventional cell tower) but at a surface-level, this is pretty damn cool.
I'd love to have a better idea as to how it works (how are they getting a much higher range than a conventional cell tower) but at a surface-level, this is pretty damn cool.
Announced cell network providers so far. The prospect of my cell phone now also being a satellite phone is an exciting one. If I understand this right, I could be anywhere on the North American...
GLOBAL PARTNERS
Cellular providers using Direct to Cell have access to reciprocal global access in all partner nations.
T-MOBILE (USA)
OPTUS (AUSTRALIA)
ROGERS (CANADA)
ONE NZ (NEW ZEALAND)
KDDI (JAPAN)
SALT (SWITZERLAND)
ENTEL (CHILE)
ENTEL (PERU)
Announced cell network providers so far.
The prospect of my cell phone now also being a satellite phone is an exciting one. If I understand this right, I could be anywhere on the North American continent north of Mexico and still have coverage through the T-Mobile plan I'm on.
It says on the site they plan to have the texting service available in 2024. Has this rolled out to anyone public yet? It's getting pretty late in the game for a 2024 launch if not. I hope this...
It says on the site they plan to have the texting service available in 2024. Has this rolled out to anyone public yet? It's getting pretty late in the game for a 2024 launch if not. I hope this isn't getting too far delayed, but I can't imagine we'll be seeing a data/RCS launch in 2025.
I mean, I know you had a discussion about the "shitting on Elon Musk" trend above, but with his companies' past track records of delivery.... I'd expect texting service to be available sometime...
I mean, I know you had a discussion about the "shitting on Elon Musk" trend above, but with his companies' past track records of delivery.... I'd expect texting service to be available sometime around 2031. Less jokingly, I do hope there is something tangible in the next year on this but I'm not holding my breath too much.
Yeah I'm under no delusions about his "over promise, under deliver" bullshit, don't worry. Though from starlink's history they do seem to be one of the faster moving companies. If you told me 6...
Yeah I'm under no delusions about his "over promise, under deliver" bullshit, don't worry. Though from starlink's history they do seem to be one of the faster moving companies. If you told me 6 years ago that there was going to be thousands of tiny satellites in low-earth orbit beaming lightning fast Internet down for a big part of the globe in 6 years, I would have laughed you out of the room. They really have accomplished a ton in a very short time.
This is a pretty exciting development for the promise of blanket coverage alone, but can anyone here comment on the speed vs cost of Starlink connections? I was researching this last year as I was...
This is a pretty exciting development for the promise of blanket coverage alone, but can anyone here comment on the speed vs cost of Starlink connections? I was researching this last year as I was considering more rural housing in CA, and ultimately came to the conclusion that I'd have to pay a lot more for the initial setup, and then the connection would be on par with very low end cable internet/DSL at best. So I ended up looking for housing exclusively in areas with cable internet instead. I saw lots of anecdotal evidence that people loved the service and were more than happy with what they were getting. How much of that is confirmation bias after a fairly large sunk cost vs genuine satisfaction?
This is closer to the initial promise of Starlink. I just wish my excitement for it wasn't completely ruined by the human dumpster fire Elon.
Why does it matter that much? Pretty much every single large company that is changing the world (for better or worse) is run by a egotistical psychopathic billionaire. Elon just happens to be more outspoken than the rest of them, but Jeff Bezos, Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, etc think that we're all bugs that are annoying them while they try to achieve their legacies. Musk is just a part of the crowd. Don't let him single-handedly ruin the extraordinary achievements of the SpaceX, Tesla, etc engineers and scientists.
Because, unlike the others, Musk actively and successfully cultivates followers who agree with his awful beliefs?
It matters to me because Musk is a transphobic piece of garbage. Similarly, if the literal nazi party were still around and learned cool new biology stuff by vivisecting humans, I would allow my distaste for nazis to overwhelm my enthusiasm for science.
I assume that you’re trying to be comforting with your comment, overall …? But — not speaking for OP, and more on a personal note — some people prefer observing, feeling, and maybe acting, when a perceived injustice occurs. Don’t let their expressed morals dissuade you from your own feelings, but note that it’s very important to them even if it isn’t equivalently so for you.
I understand having extreme distaste for Elon himself, but you also have to understand that all of the billionaire class are fascist corrupt murdering monsters right? Companies like Coca Cola literally murdered hundreds to thousands of people for daring to stand up to them in South America. Amazon has singlehandedly destroyed the lives of millions of people and forced them to work menial jobs and piss in bottles or die (many people chose death, one of my friends included)
I really don't understand why people are perfectly fine ignoring those things but draw the line at the Twitter lunatic who clowns around with donald trump. Jeff Bezos and pals may not have a cult of personality like musk does (or at least not as widespread of one) but I don't believe for a moment that they've done any less harm to the world, and honestly for most of them I believe they've done MUCH MORE harm than musk.
Every single thread where Space X/Tesla/Starlink announces an incredible achievement born off the blood, sweat, and tears of thousands of hard working people; the most anyone ever wants to say is "ugh I hate Elon Musk" and it's downright exhausting. It's not productive or relevant to the discussion and all it does is minimize and dismiss the magic that these people are working so hard to achieve.
We're talking about cell-phone coverage for the entire earth, no fancy phone required. This is life changing technology for some people, assuming they can pull it off and it won't be extortionately expensive. To brush aside this kind of leap forward with a throwaway lazy comment about the owner of the company is infuriating.
I’m sorry about your friend. And agreed that this will keep happening as long as billionaires and corporations continue existing; all of them are complicit.
I disagree that people are consciously drawing that line. Most aren’t aware, and those that are might have too much on their mental plate to be able to focus on the problem given that it’s ever present. If the only thing someone can accomplish is pointing out that a problem exists, that still seems worthwhile to me, even if it doesn’t for you.
And for what it’s worth, when threads like these come up for other massive companies, people do point out how atrocious they are. It’s just that Chiquita isn’t expanding the frontiers of scientific knowledge, they’re organizing coups across dozens of countries for cheap bananas. So there’s no reason for positivity in the slightest.
No one is trying to minimize these accomplishments, they’re telling other people how they make them feel (or at least, that’s what I would be doing). Agreed that it could be worded more productively for a discussion, but pointing out the source of a work is useful for people who don’t have context. And honestly, people should be free to say how they feel.
I’m also sorry that it feels like people are attacking the genuinely skilled, passionate people who are working on these projects; I assume they are just attacking Musk (which I presume we can all get behind), and relating their personal experiences.
Apologies; I don’t this digression has been productive. I’d imagine that you want to continue discussing there actual technical accomplishment at hand, so I’ll stop with this thread.
You’ve used the phrase “I don’t understand” and asked “why does it matter so much”; so in sum, it matters to me because I point this out everywhere anyways, and I understand perfectly well that our entire economic system is designed to either turn us against each other or kill us all. Hopefully those are straightforward enough answers.
I apologize for getting testy there, it's not the first time the only comment chain in a thread like this has just been a discussion about what new evil thing elon has done recently. I respect people having those opinions, or even those discussions; it's just frustrating when they always seem to happen solely in unrelated threads.
I also respect the user base of tildes too much to believe that we have to preface every single discussion about a spaceX topic with the fact that we hate elon musk just in case everyone wasn't on the same page. As if we haven't focused enough on the atrocities going on in the world right now. There's power in infamy, and I prefer to not contribute to it when I don't have to.
Correct. The only difference between Musk and other billionaires is that Musk is enough of an attention-seeking child to publicly be corrupt.
This isn’t true, you’re just thinking about the CEO’s that get in the news and get talked about.
It's pretty difficult to become a billionaire without completely losing your humanity. I'm sure there are exceptions out there, but the vast majority of them are monsters. Even the "respected" ones just have better PR firms.
I don’t know any billionaires and neither do you, presumably. Seems like that’s more an ideological article of faith than a fact. What does “completely losing your humanity” even mean?
I don't know them personally, but I know their deeds and I know it's basically impossible to accumulate that level of wealth without abusing thousands of people? It's not just elon or bezos, the investment banker billionaires have destroyed this country's working class. The oil industry billionaires have destroyed the environment. The military industrial complex billionaires have orchestrated the death of millions of people by starting wars to enrich themselves. The pharma billionaires started the opioid crisis by bribing doctors to over-prescribe life-destroying drugs. The insurance billionaires have denied and overcharged for life-saving procedures and medicines to save them a buck. The telecommunications billionaires destroyed our privacy and sold us out to the NSA and FBI.
I'm confused, is this a controversial take or something? Do you think these kinds of things just happens on their own?
It’s a very common take but it’s just generic anti-capitalist ideology.
Do you think the reason Beyoncé got to $760 million (estimated) is because she abuses people? Will she need to abuse people to get to a billion, or just keep being a popular singer? When she gets to a billion, are you then going to look for reasons why actually, she has “lost her humanity” and is evil now?
It does require extreme popularity to get to that kind of money, but some products are very popular and wealth snowballs. It’s not fair but that’s just kind of how it works. There are billions of people willing to spend money on something they like, and sometimes they all decide to buy the same things, or buy them the same way, so that’s where the money flows.
So yes, in a sense, I do think extreme wealth can just kind of happen, because sometimes there are no brakes. It’s a similar mechanism as posts going viral, and it happens more easily for virtual goods.
It’s also true that businesses in many industries have made a lot of money by doing all sorts of terrible things, but the idea that it’s not possible for extreme wealth to happen any other way is a sort of wishful thinking by people who want simple rules to decide who to hate.
I mean... yes? And this was just the first thing that came to my head, I'm sure there's much more than just the abusing of sweatshop labor in Sir Lanka.
I get the argument, but celebrities are rarely billionaires, and they don't make even make up a tiny minority of the people I was calling out in my comment. Highlighting the very rare exception and not even providing an actual billionaire like Taylor Swift is just odd.
See, this is the sort of thing that happens to celebrities. Linking their name to anything, good or bad, sells newspapers. If a singer didn’t do anything wrong themselves, they can dig for abuse happening somewhere in the supply chain for their merchandise. It’s not all bad, since it’s a news hook for an article about sweatshops, but Beyoncé is not the reason why there are sweatshops in Sri Lanka.
How much do you police your supply chain? If you don’t do that, have you lost your humanity?
(To be clear, I think it’s good for people to be aware of where the stuff they buy comes from and to try to use more ethical sourcing, but not doing that doesn’t make you evil, it just means you’re not being as careful as you could be.)
I don't have to police my supply chain because I'm not selling $5,000 handbags that cost $4.50 to make. And funnily enough neither are any of the people I know and respect. But you're right I should empathize with the soon-to-be billionaire because she totally didn't know that her company employed modern day slaves. It may have been reported to sell clicks, but it still happened.
And even then, you continue to focus on the tiny fraction of a percent of (not even) billionaires who just so happened to be lucky enough (or more likely nepotismed into) fame and fortune. What about all of the real billionaires I mentioned in my original comments? Maybe they also just got smeared as a hook in the newspaper for hiring death squads in Columbia to assassinate union leaders.
It seems like you're the one making claims about billionaires as a class, not me? My argument is that we don't actually know much about most rich businesspeople (Beyonce included), and you keep saying that, actually, you do know all about them. But based on what?
I don't think you made a spreadsheet and calculated this. You're not citing a study. Such a study couldn't be done by reading the news because most people don't appear in the news. Finding more news stories about good or bad billionaires wouldn't tell us about the denominator in a percentage calculation.
Where does your confidence come from? Why do you find skepticism about your anti-capitalist beliefs so threatening that you're hurling more overheated rhetoric at me for raising doubts?
I raise doubts about these things because I'm against dehumanizing people based on which class they're in. There are a lot of things going on in the world that I don't like, but I think that's going too far.
Do I really need to explain why I think Elon is worse than other billionaires? Yes, they are all bad but I would hope it would be clear that the richest man in the world also being red pilled and working as a stooge for Trump is worse than most billionaires.
If this can reach any place on earth with good speed it makes me wonder if it's worth wiring up the world (though we've gotten pretty far so far.) This got me pretty hyped for the future of satcom, but eh, I hope we don't forget about Kessler
p.s. I'll be noise, but can we keep the misery to ~society? Y'all bringing reddit to my tildes :P
I'd imagine we're still going to have fibre optics/wires running everywhere. Starlink has limits on the number of subscribers per km^2 due to physics reasons (bandwidth + beam forming limitations), so if you want a quick and reliable internet connection especially in an urban area, you'll want to connect via hard line.
That said, as long as some competitors can spring up, this could make a decent argument against building out rural ISPs in some situations.
People have cracked reddit-esque jokes in some more serious threads I've written in; ignoring them and not upvoting is all I've been doing. Feel free to label the comment as "Offtopic" or "Noise" if you don't feel it's useful to the conversation at hand.
Yeah, I doubt this will ever replace hardwired internet for most homes in America that have cheap access to it; but this will revolutionize (kill) the satellite phone market, and drastically reduce the need for cellphone towers in less populated areas. It'll still mean a big reduction in physical infrastructure throughout the world; especially for countries who haven't already invested trillions of dollars in telecom infrastructure. Lots of people in Asian countries have a cellphone as their only computer, it's pretty reasonable to think that is the model of other developing cultures as well.
I really like the idea that this essentially kills roaming. But it seems from the details, also because Starlink isn't a mobile network provider, they do communicate with local providers.
This is exactly the problem though. You can't have multiple competitors blanketing the earth in these satellites, the aforementioned Kessler Syndrome. This isn't even exactly unique to space....there's a reason we don't have dozens of power companies running dozens of electrical cables running proprietary and different competing standards.
If this gets traction, Starlink becomes a monopoly in rural areas. If not for the above reason....good luck convincing SpaceX to give you an affordable contract to launch your competing network.
This all still heavily relies on ground equipment to work, kessler is still a major concern, and ground based systems like cell towers and physical wired connections will always be faster and cheaper.
Pretty much every improvement to satellite equipment will also apply to ground based radio communications and it will work better because it's 100km closer than a satellite.
I have my doubts about how well it will do indoors or in comparison to much faster fiber optics.
I'd love to have a better idea as to how it works (how are they getting a much higher range than a conventional cell tower) but at a surface-level, this is pretty damn cool.
This PDF has some more info, but its still not super specific.
Announced cell network providers so far.
The prospect of my cell phone now also being a satellite phone is an exciting one. If I understand this right, I could be anywhere on the North American continent north of Mexico and still have coverage through the T-Mobile plan I'm on.
It says on the site they plan to have the texting service available in 2024. Has this rolled out to anyone public yet? It's getting pretty late in the game for a 2024 launch if not. I hope this isn't getting too far delayed, but I can't imagine we'll be seeing a data/RCS launch in 2025.
I mean, I know you had a discussion about the "shitting on Elon Musk" trend above, but with his companies' past track records of delivery.... I'd expect texting service to be available sometime around 2031. Less jokingly, I do hope there is something tangible in the next year on this but I'm not holding my breath too much.
Yeah I'm under no delusions about his "over promise, under deliver" bullshit, don't worry. Though from starlink's history they do seem to be one of the faster moving companies. If you told me 6 years ago that there was going to be thousands of tiny satellites in low-earth orbit beaming lightning fast Internet down for a big part of the globe in 6 years, I would have laughed you out of the room. They really have accomplished a ton in a very short time.
This is a pretty exciting development for the promise of blanket coverage alone, but can anyone here comment on the speed vs cost of Starlink connections? I was researching this last year as I was considering more rural housing in CA, and ultimately came to the conclusion that I'd have to pay a lot more for the initial setup, and then the connection would be on par with very low end cable internet/DSL at best. So I ended up looking for housing exclusively in areas with cable internet instead. I saw lots of anecdotal evidence that people loved the service and were more than happy with what they were getting. How much of that is confirmation bias after a fairly large sunk cost vs genuine satisfaction?