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Oh, 2022

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Re: Oh, 2022

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just expensive. IIRC, the receiving dish and associated gear burns 120W or something like that.

That's still only around $100 a year in electricity assuming 10 cents/kWh.

In Germany, regular prices scratch 30 cents/kWh, so you're looking at another 25€ a month just to run the dish.

A regular unlimited Gigabit Uplink runs 40€-80€ a month, with hardware included and a power usage in the range of 10W.

But, unfortunately, anywhere you have a Garden large enough to host starlink, you probably won't have anything near that speed available, so it's still pretty competitive.

:(

Re: Oh, 2022

#262

Regarding spacex in this, my starlink terminal recently hit a milestone of 0.00% ICMP loss to terrestrial ISP things in the pacific northwest. Averaged over 5, 6 hour periods. 20 icmp pings every 60s, basically a default smokeping install set to once a minute. Previously it was running somewhere around 0.15% to 0.60% which was still totally usable... if you put a similar test setup on a noisy/oversubscribed coaxial c…

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.

Question: How is starlink going to be a game changer in ways publicly funded infrastructure (either traditional cables or cables + 5G towers) aren’t?

Your anecdote doesn’t really cover “game changer” since land outside of suburbia is pretty either scarce, big and expensive, underdeveloped, etc. and not many people want to live there (and I doubt fast broadband is the only thing holding people back).

I honestly don’t think starlink is useful for that many people. Personally I would categorize it as a quality of life improvement for a small group of wealthy individuals (and maybe even smaller number of industrial workers which work onsite in remote locations). I have a hard time seeing it doing anything more.

Re: Oh, 2022

#263
post #61

> low-lying coastal nations like Bangladesh And lots of other places. About 1 billion people live along coastlines at 20 meters or less above sea level, and 200 million at 5 meters or less. I live in a wealthy country but well within the 5 meters range and am already having to think about whether it wouldn't be more prudent to sell my house today, now that it's still worth something, and emigrate to somewhere with a…

You have a solid 20 years before it impacts value. We are getting out in 10 years

Re: Oh, 2022

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The planet without toxic media and mad billionaires is a much nicer place than the planet with them. Many of the biggest trad-media offenders will be dead by 2030. Will they be replaced I'd like to hope that they won't, but why? The same forces that produced the current crop are no weaker, indeed stronger. Past performance indicates that there will be more.

The alternatives popping up are largely even worse than traditional media. Full on Fantasy as news. Whatever makes people feel enraged/smug. I’m not sure why everyone is cheering the death of all these institutions when there are no society stabilizing alternatives anywhere

You are right. As for why, the incongruent cheering could be because people feel a little betrayed. Personally, I'm bummed that all news has bias and recycling is a sham.

Re: Oh, 2022

#265
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> There will never be enough debris that we can't fly through LEO.

Flying through and flying through safely are very different things. With tens of thousands of objects in and below LEO and (presumably) increasing flights to orbit, it's only a matter of time until a rocket gets taken down. It doesn't require a particularly large piece for an involuntary update to your deorbiting plans.

Re: Oh, 2022

#266
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, space is big. Lower earth orbit is still very big. However if you have dozens of operators, each with thousands of satiates making multiple round the world trips. The chances of a specific satellite colliding perhaps is tiny (given how big space is). However the chances of one of the thousands colliding with any of the other thousands over any of their orbital periods increases exponentially as the number of sat…

Tens of thousands. > There are currently over 1,600 Starlink satellites in orbit, and that number will continue to grow; SpaceX has filed paperwork for up to 42,000 satellites for the constellation. https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-internet-satellites-la... They're aware of the risk of collisions, but toss in a few more vendors trying for the same size, and you can have potentially hundreds of thousands of satel…

What worries me personally is that they are aware and simply don’t care. Our current climate catastrophe is a testament that big business can be completely aware of an impending disaster, but still ignore it while profits are showing.

Re: Oh, 2022

#267
Regarding politics, information overflow, and general increase in lunacy.

To put it simply, it was expected the level of noise and sensation will rise after smartphones emerged. Loud lunacy seems to be a great way to catch public attention currently and this is well understood by both the media, politicians and vegabonds of wealth. Sensational journalism was always a problem, now add to that billions of people able to elevate the wildest stories, let alone create their own. If course we're drowning in digital noise and it isn't going to subside as long as it's effective.

But there's good news.

I cannot stress enough that it's entirely possible to control the level of exposure to said digital noise. You don't have to follow news, politics and social media intensely. You can just opt out. If you find yourself constantly angry on Twitter, fighting endlessly on Facebook, and cussing at the news, it's entirely by design. The only way to win this game is by not playing.

Re: Oh, 2022

#268

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?

In Australia, it's $140 / month, plus the capex of $700 for the dish, which obviously won't work on any other provider. I suspect resale on that device, if the carrier allows it, would be reasonable, but I don't expect I'd be moving away from this service.

People are comparing (sub)urban US multi-carrier options, or heavily populated countries (like Italy), that have much cheaper pricing. It's not surprising that terrestrial services there are better spec'd and cheaper.

For me (in AU) it's compelling because I otherwise have an option of a 3G yagi / booster (nearest tower is 15km away, service is awful normally, but unusable in storms, frequently highly contended, etc), dial-up (there's very few places that still offer such a service, and just the landline connection fee is $40 / month to start with), or geo-stationary satellite (what I've just moved away from after 2+ years, which has > 600ms RTT to the nearest capital city, and a max downstream of 25Mbps, which is also frequently highly contended during peak times.

The 100W / hour usage is frustrating, and claims of electricity being 'just 10c / kWh' are quaint, I guess coming from well serviced parts of EU / US? Here most people are up for 30c (AUD) / kWh, and if on ToU that can go up to 60c during peak (2pm through 8pm). I've got solar, so on average I'm powering this 'for free' 25% of the time.

Re: Oh, 2022

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You know you can like get them to fix that right?

how?

Re: Oh, 2022

#270

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.

Question: How is starlink going to be a game changer in ways publicly funded infrastructure (either traditional cables or cables + 5G towers) aren’t? Your anecdote doesn’t really cover “game changer” since land outside of suburbia is pretty either scarce, big and expensive, underdeveloped, etc. and not many people want to live there (and I doubt fast broadband is the only thing holding people back). I honestly don’t…

there are a number of rural areas in the USA that politically show very low likelihood of getting something like a proper last mile broadband service built by wireline infrastructure any time soon (fiber and GPON or active ethernet). some rural counties in eastern WA are the exception.
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