231–240 of 557 posts
I think just as his previous article might have been overly optimistic, this one is overly pessimistic. As the pendulum is in the process of swinging to the other extreme, I think we will see a lot of negative events slowing down now that people are seeing the negative consequences of their actions and try to revert course. For example, even though the world is tending towards a worst place in terms of things like cl…
posts like this are the worst for meaningful discussion. Imagine a person comes at you and dump all sort of thoughts about everything under the sun in one go, most of the time mixing informed opinions with those on fields they have no expertise in. Who are you, the president? An activist with no agenda (all of them)? A generic "scientist"? A wise person? I would run from that as quickly as I can. I wouldn't assume a…
Weigh this against his experience, wisdom, and level of thought put into his work, and apply salt to taste.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll go as far as to say that Starlink is now so good i honestly believe it's going to change the other industries and not just its own. As an example I've been looking at properties outside of suburbia since testing a friends Starlink terminal. I know i can get proper broadband on par with cable anywhere. It's changed my personal long term future plans. I think it's going to change a lot of things.
Isn’t starlink internet connection expensive atm? $99 per month plus one time h/w costs?
> (Apologies for slow load time: this blog runs on an ancient, slow Athlon box and this entry is currently being hammered by Hacker News readers.) Lol, and yet it still loads lickety split compared to something like cnn.com for instance.
"A few weeks later, Oxford—urged on by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—reversed course. It signed an exclusive vaccine deal with AstraZeneca that gave the pharmaceutical giant sole rights and no guarantee of low prices—with the less-publicized potential for Oxford to eventually make millions from the deal and win plenty of prestige." https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/apr/15/oxfordastraz...
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That's the claim made, yes. Now, how many other satellites are likely to get hit in "5-10 years" of flak flying around at orbital velocities? It's nice if your goal is to say "Well, it probably won't render space useless forever ..." - but that assumes one collision, and no ongoing collisions. If it's "5-10 years per collision," and each new one resets the 5-10 years timeframe, well, there's a lot of stuff up there t…
> If it's "5-10 years per collision," and each new one resets the 5-10 years timeframe It's not. The concern is that unwanted collisions will become common enough that satellites break down or are completely destroyed within months. There will never be enough debris that we can't fly through LEO.
Back in 2016, Stross was confident that Brexit would cause mass famine in the UK:[1]
> I'm calling Hard Brexit a road to mass starvation and famine-grade deaths on a scale not seen in the UK since the Hungry Forties (that's the 1840s, not the 1940s).
Despite the UK leaving the EU's single market, the UK's currency has not plummeted in value and such famines have not occurred.
Stross has also been calling bitcoin a bubble since before most people heard about it. You'd think after a decade of being wrong he would change his mind. Even in 2017 when BTC was a mere $10,000, Stross claimed it was a commodity bubble. After receiving criticism for that view, he went a step further and declared that when the bitcoin bubble burst, it would cause those who lost their shirts to become neo-nazis.[2]
If this all sounds unhinged, that's because it is.
1. https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/10/facts-o...
2. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2017/11/unforsee...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn’t starlink internet connection expensive atm? $99 per month plus one time h/w costs?
Not just expensive. IIRC, the receiving dish and associated gear burns 120W or something like that.
I would like to remind everyone that Stross writes fiction for money. He does not make money off of accurate predictions. Here are some examples. Back in 2016, Stross was confident that Brexit would cause mass famine in the UK:[1] > I'm calling Hard Brexit a road to mass starvation and famine-grade deaths on a scale not seen in the UK since the Hungry Forties (that's the 1840s, not the 1940s). Despite the UK leaving…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn’t starlink internet connection expensive atm? $99 per month plus one time h/w costs?
That's not terrible. I pay something like $140/mo for 1gbps (in reality I've never seen speeds >300mbps) with no data cap. $100 for ~100mbps with no data cap is reasonable to me.