Even when flying intercontinental for many hours, I usually just pull a Puddy on flights and do nothing. I have my laptop with me, of course, but I usually leave it just in the overhead compartment.
I don't even watch movies or read.
Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?
71–80 of 399 posts
Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?
#72Well, hells bells, next week I'm actually going to be flying on an Alaska Airlines E175. That's quite rare for me, I can't remember the last time I've flown on one of their small planes. And it looks like all of their E175s have Starlink. Sweet! I may have to try it out, even if paying for WiFi on a short flight is generally a waste of money. Edit: ooh, it's free! Because I have their credit card.
> And it looks like all of their E175s have Starlink Not quite sorry, we only track the frames that do have Starlink. But if you check back a few days beforehand you can see if yours matches!
Took me a second to parse that. It says 28 of 28 E175s have Starlink, but what I am hearing you say is that Alaska has more than 28 E175s.
Indeed, wikipedia says their fleet includes 47 E175s. Consider my hopes dashed :(. Oh well, I don't usually bother with wifi on flights that are only a few hours anyway, but free Starlink speed wifi would be fun!
Feature request: Put a disclaimer on the fleet page that the tracking is limited. Or pull enough data to say "28 airframes of 47 are starlink capable" which is what I think most people will be looking to know in the fleet info.
Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I’m not sure why SpaceX is doing this One word: marketing.
A few more words: they’re struggling to find a niche where their ungodly expensive product makes more sense than the readily available alternatives. In this case, fair play it’s objectively better.
They have several niches where the alternatives are more expensive and worse. Half the RVers in any park have it now. RVing teaches you how much of the country is not covered by cell signal. Boats.
Another one I know first hand: food trucks. I do several events a year where cell signals get overwhelmed and cease to function, but I still have to process my credit cards. I’d say a solid 25% of food trucks are running these now.
Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
>A few more words: they’re struggling to find a niche where their ungodly expensive product makes more sense than the readily available alternatives pretty obvious you never worked for an ISP and forgot about all the `middle of nowhere` customers who have no high speed internet. even for me, in houston texas, we cant get fiber to the home and were stuck with AT&T DSL which was like $60 per month and ungodly slow. Als…
In all fairness, it was a qualified statement: " readily available alternatives". That immediately disqualifies customers stuck in the boonies, or a few hundred feet away from service coverage.
He has readily available alternatives, but they suck.
There are other, far worse forms of satellite Internet, so everybody has a readily available alternative. That makes it not a qualifying statement at all.
Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
A few more words: they’re struggling to find a niche where their ungodly expensive product makes more sense than the readily available alternatives. In this case, fair play it’s objectively better.
It's not that expensive. The Starlink Mini is around $200, and service is $50/mo for 100gb. I've been somewhat skeptical of the addressable market (doesn't fiber + cell tower network offer good enough coverage?) but I know so many people who have put it on their RV, their boat, or are using it rurally that I've started changing my mind. And the service really is better than cell phone networks, which are far too patc…
Yeah, as an RVer, I can tell you that you would probably be surprised by how much of the country does not have readily available cell service. And even if it does, they might not have it on your network.
I was paying more to have SIM cards for all of the big three, and getting much less out of it
Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
>A few more words: they’re struggling to find a niche where their ungodly expensive product makes more sense than the readily available alternatives pretty obvious you never worked for an ISP and forgot about all the `middle of nowhere` customers who have no high speed internet. even for me, in houston texas, we cant get fiber to the home and were stuck with AT&T DSL which was like $60 per month and ungodly slow. Als…
In all fairness, it was a qualified statement: " readily available alternatives". That immediately disqualifies customers stuck in the boonies, or a few hundred feet away from service coverage.
Just noting that the phrasing "readily available alternatives" by itself is slightly ambiguous: it could be read as subsetting ("the alternatives that are readily available") or just attributive ("the alternatives, which are readily available").
Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And it looks like all of their E175s have Starlink Not quite sorry, we only track the frames that do have Starlink. But if you check back a few days beforehand you can see if yours matches!
Took me a second to parse that. It says 28 of 28 E175s have Starlink, but what I am hearing you say is that Alaska has more than 28 E175s. Indeed, wikipedia says their fleet includes 47 E175s. Consider my hopes dashed :(. Oh well, I don't usually bother with wifi on flights that are only a few hours anyway, but free Starlink speed wifi would be fun! Feature request: Put a disclaimer on the fleet page that the trackin…
> Feature request: Put a disclaimer on the fleet page that the tracking is limited. Or pull enough data to say "28 airframes of 47 are starlink capable" which is what I think most people will be looking to know in the fleet info.
Oh, this one is very doable and makes sense! We track this internally anyway so it's just a matter of surfacing it on the fleet information.
Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?
#78Re: Show HN: Will my flight have Starlink?
#79Looking forward to Starlink on UK trains. I frequently have to go basically without internet for a couple of hours.
Here’s a hack, get yourself a cheap eSIM data only plan from an alternative UK network (VOXI, Talkmobile etc) if you main network doesn’t have connectivity; they will!
There's even eSIMs specifically marketed as being a "backup" esim, with coverage on _all_ UK networks.
At least on my android, you could set the second esim as a "backup" that it would switch to for data if the main one lost connection (it took a few seconds, so it wasn't an "always connected" experience, probably because the phone wants to save power)
Lots of options if you search for "esim UK all networks".