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Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

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Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#431

Post by syedkarim »

mike_d wrote: post #251
syedkarim wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are dozens of custom ICs from STMicroelectronics in each terminal. ST is a public company; NYSE:STM The terminal is also using a large amount of high-frequency substrate. That could be Rogers, but maybe one of the much cheaper Chinese materials. But I don’t think a position should be taken based on what’s inside of a terminal. The real play is in shorting the entire satellite industry. Every existing satellite…

Iridium and Global Star make the majority of their money from governments supporting custom use cases and working with OEM partners. Starlink might be a viable alternative in 10 years on the next-gen bidding cycle, but not before.

That’s a solid point, though I think there is still a shorting opportunity. If they only have 10 years before revenues start to decline drastically, then their value doesn’t increase. It’s possible that the downward revenue spiral starts sooner than 2030. Maybe. Who knows.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#432

Post by rsynnott »

MinorTom wrote: post #260
disiplus wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having an assigned routable address is not a thing in many countries citation needed

> increasingly uses CGN technologies (90% for mobile internet and 50% for fixed line) https://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/are-you-sharing-...

Fixed line ISPs who use cgnat typically have ipv6, tho.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#433

Post by ncallaway »

RapidFire wrote: post #336
whylo wrote: post #316

Interesting snippet from the terms of service: > For Services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other spacecraft, the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities. Accordingly, Disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement.

History tells us it is far better to let Martians govern themselves. The colonies would eventually rebel regardless; might as well embrace it and let them dictate their own laws. That being said. Guns on mars! GUNS ON MARS!!! They have a rIGHt to hunt space deer!

I agree that any Mars colony should very quickly become independent.

However, I think we should wait until there are enough people on Mars that there can be a small representative government (or other form of government that they would choose).

Mars shouldn't be independent when the first 10 people land on the surface of the planet.

This tos item has always been my biggest complaint about Starlink. I shouldn't be forced to take a position on premature Martian independence just because I hate Comcast.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#434

Post by thebigspacefuck »

systemvoltage wrote: post #22

I am not sure if this is wishful thinking but can Starlink lead to growth of smaller communities that are self-sustaining (produce their own renewable electricity, food, etc) that cannot simply exist due to connectivity constraints? I have a dream of the world where we live in 1-10k population small towns littered around the globe, connected through starlink and public ways, and the idea of cities would become obsole…

The biggest downside is you live in bum fucking nowhere. You’re stuck in a social circle you can’t escape from and the only escape is to get on Starlink and talk to people about the good old days when we used to sit in traffic and huff exhaust fumes, but at least we had options. There’s only 2 grocery stores in town and they’re full of the lowest denominator crap because nobody in your town has any good taste. The kids your kid grows up with have stupid parents and are stupid themselves, so your smart kid grows up feeling isolated and like there’s something wrong with them because they’re different. Maybe your kid pulls through it all or maybe tries to numb out with drugs and ODs. Maybe you develop a bad reputation around town for your differences (maybe your an atheist in a town of Christians, I don’t know) and get blackballed from social events. Maybe you go to the bar and everyone’s in a relationship except for you. Or maybe you’re gay but there’s nowhere to be out. The movie theater only has 2 screens and only runs G and PG movies. The biggest music act you saw this year was a cover of “My heart will go on” played by an 8 year old on the Clarinet at the Little Miss Chokecherry Festival. You tried to expose the town to the culture you’re into but everyone just thinks you’re weird. The traveling salesman problem gets a million times harder.

Basically unless everyone is plugged into the net all the time in some massively fulfilling way or rearranges perfectly every generation to avoid cultural bubbles, small towns suck and people leave them for a reason. They head to cities and those cities become thriving multicultural hubs of new ideas that slowly make their way back to the smaller towns.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#435

Post by LinuxBender »

pascalmahe wrote: post #275

I've heard that this will be a disaster for amateur astronomy. Yet Starlink is claiming that their mitigation techniques will avoid the problem [0]. I can't tell if their claim is sound. Can someone with expertise weigh in? 0: https://www.spacex.com/updates/starlink-update-04-28-2020/in...

I am not an astronomer, but I have an idea and maybe folks could tell me if this makes sense. AFAIK some astronomers use digital optics and a computer with their telescopes. For those people, perhaps a solution would be to have software that identifies the satellites, then learns to "ignore" them. The satellites are moving relative to the earth which suggests if you are focused on one area of space, your computer will eventually see 100% of the space. So while not perfect, you could in effect make the satellites invisible. For those using a traditional telescope this obviously would not help. Thoughts? Is this feasible today using current technology?

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#436

Post by escalt »

IgorPartola wrote: post #363
lxgr wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IPv6 really isn't that complicated compared to CGNAT! Of course, today IPv6 only can't be considered full internet access, so providers usually need both – and given that CGNAT gets consumers 99% of what they want/are willing to pay for, providers sometimes can't be bothered to also implement IPv6. I used to have GCNAT + IPv6 on my provider, but the v6 part of their CPE was worse than useless – no option to open port…

It can’t? I at one point messed up my firewall rules and didn’t notice that IPv4 wasn’t accessible for a few days. Nobody complained. I eventually noticed something was amiss and fixed it but really most places seems to be running dual stack. I am starting to run some IPV6 only services.

It would be great if offering public IPv6 only services was viable, but according to Google statistics (https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html) you're still cutting off about two thirds of potential users.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#437

Post by mehdix »

Would they open it to a country such as Iran? It will disrupt censorship and access contol efforts of the government. I read the gov have recently assembled a task force to find a "solution" for this upcoming problem. I'd guess it'll be difficult to spot the receivers, since a large number of the will be deployed at any corner of the country, due to low price, high mobility and ease of installation and use. Obviously they can't sell hardware there, however it will be smuggled. They can sell subscription though, if they accept crypto. I wonder whether they will consider it?

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#438

Post by remram »

navaati wrote: post #297
mike_d wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a consumer internet eyeball service. Having an assigned routable address is not a thing in many countries, and you really shouldn't expect it as a "feature" in the future. Eventually the Comcasts of the world will sell off the majority of the IPv4 they hold to the AWSs of the world.

> Eventually the Comcasts of the world will sell off the majority of the IPv4 they hold to the AWSs of the world. And so died what was knows as "Internet" and AOL was resurrected…

Hopefully only IPv4 Internet will suffer.

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#439

Post by dreen »

walrus01 wrote: post #40

I have been using a starlink beta terminal for 3 months now, ask me whatever you want. Day job is senior network engineer for a regional-sized (4 US states) fiber based ISP. My most important message to everyone reading this is that it's not intended to compete with properly implemented wireline based services. It's going to absolutely blow away consumer-grade highly oversubscribed, bottom of the barrel ku and ka ban…

What's the actual upload speed in good conditions?

Re: Starlink is now Accepting General Pre-orders

#440

Post by apcragg »

herpderperator wrote: post #265
itronitron wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much does it cost?

(I am not OP, but this is pretty easily found on the site.) $499 USD for the dish, $99 USD per month for service (no data cap.) Price seems to change to local currency if your country is not USA.

I don't have any insider info but there is absolutely no chance that the dish is costing them even <2x what they are charging for it. I don't really see how their business model pencils out even assuming massive oversubscription, perfectly geographically distributed customers, and the new laser links. It's just hard to make it work when your satellites fall out of the sky and need replacing. The technology certainly works and is really cool to see as an engineer, don't get me wrong, but even Musk businesses will eventually need to make money. For Tesla, their path to profit was steep, but feasible; here I just don't see it at all.
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