Live data from Hacker News

Existing smartphones will connect with new satellite constellations in 2023

spectrum.ieee.org

151–160 of 233 posts

Re: Existing smartphones will connect with new satellite constellations in 2023

#151
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This is such a tired take. Strong leaders are able to marshal engineers to build things like the iPhone, electric cars, reusable rockets. Both Steve Jobs and Elon Musk excelled at this, and just because they're not doing the low level engineering work doesn't mean they don't get any credit. And by all accounts Steve Jobs was extremely involved in the UX design of the original iPhone, and Elon Musk is often involved i…

> Strong leaders are able to marshal engineers to build things like the iPhone, electric cars, reusable rockets

talking about tired takes...

The real refreshing take would be acknowledging that these things would exist even without them and that the cult of personalities is such an antiquate way to explain the success (or the demise) of companies (looks like Americans have learned nothing from the fall of Stalin).

Anyway: Steve Jobs did not give us smartphones and for sure Musk did not invent electric cars or reusable rockets.

They are (were?) good at marketing what other people made and other people still built.

In the case of Steve Jobs he died before turning full Elon Musk, whose contribution to the companies he's been part of has been mostly bad PR and egomaniac stunts.

Not that it hasn't worked more than a couple of times, but that doesn't mean it's good.

Psychologically wise, they are both visionary tyrants, emphasis on the second trait, which is the prevalent, the most evident and the one other people had to deal with.

As Psychology Today has put it "Steve Jobs success sends the wrong message to aspiring leaders" because "while Jobs was a successful leader, entrepreneur, and visionary, he fell considerably short of the qualities possessed by the very best leaders"

In tech everything is still muddy and it's hard for people outside of the field to differentiate between the genius and the impostor, so to put it in terms that are easier to understand for the general public, Musk and Jobs are Kanye West, the people who actually designed the things you mentioned and then built them and made them work, are Frank Zappa.

edit: to prove the point.

Who can name, off the top of their head, the strong leader who gave us the Nokia 1100 and the Nokia 1110 that are as of today the two best selling mobile phones ever in human history (250 million units each)?

Or the strong leader responsible for Mario franchising, almost 800 million copies sold, or Pokémon, 450 million copies sold?

Re: Existing smartphones will connect with new satellite constellations in 2023

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bezos acts like a dick too. His space company is materially worse in every way. Amazon is famous for being a shitty place to work. We don’t even know what influence he has on the Washington Post, because he does it in secret. It’s weird you prefer it to be PR-whitewashed rather than just see it for what it is.

Not indulging one asshole does not mean you support the other one.

But pretending Elon is deserving of this attention is just lazy journalism… like he’s screaming from a megaphone what he’s doing… and journalists aren’t even looking at other billionaires/space companies/car companies that are up to worse activity than anything Elon is responsible for. (I’m not saying it excuses it, but it’s wasted attention)

Re: Existing smartphones will connect with new satellite constellations in 2023

#153

How is the Chinese government going to control the flow of information in China once all phones do this and traffic need not leave the Starlink network to allow communication between endpoints?

How are governments going to collect taxes once people use crypto across this for thier transactions?

Probably once the people give up after North Korea steals all their crypto.

Re: Existing smartphones will connect with new satellite constellations in 2023

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide details of the order cancellation? That’s a new one. Wasn’t the car telemetry only published because it went to court? Why are you upset with Musk when someone tries to defraud Tesla and they prove them wrong with data? No one else’s telemetry has been published. Meanwhile Uber have “god-mode” and can track every driver globally in realtime… and it was abused to stalk people. SpaceX donated starlinks…

> This super-villain narrative of Musk is hilariously comical. Where is it coming from? For me it came from Musk downplaying COVID for financial gain. Other than that, he's become proficient at discrediting himself as a reasonable, trustworthy person and presenting himself as a detached from reality lunatic who doesn't know when to stfu and how to behave. When people like this have a lot (too much?) power that's when…

So do we all pick our own billionaires now? Like Musk is the villain of the Left and Gates is the villain of the right?

I reckon people should focus on fixing a system that allows individuals to amass such power/wealth. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Re: Existing smartphones will connect with new satellite constellations in 2023

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone know what codec they're using at 2kbps per voice call?

Probably not this but LyraV2 at 3.2kbps sounds super clean https://opensource.googleblog.com/2022/09/lyra-v2-a-better-f...

I'd say it sounds decent but certainly not "super clean".

Re: Existing smartphones will connect with new satellite constellations in 2023

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide details of the order cancellation? That’s a new one. Wasn’t the car telemetry only published because it went to court? Why are you upset with Musk when someone tries to defraud Tesla and they prove them wrong with data? No one else’s telemetry has been published. Meanwhile Uber have “god-mode” and can track every driver globally in realtime… and it was abused to stalk people. SpaceX donated starlinks…

> This super-villain narrative of Musk is hilariously comical. Where is it coming from? For me it came from Musk downplaying COVID for financial gain. Other than that, he's become proficient at discrediting himself as a reasonable, trustworthy person and presenting himself as a detached from reality lunatic who doesn't know when to stfu and how to behave. When people like this have a lot (too much?) power that's when…

Downplaying COVID was the only thing Musk was right. See Sweden not following WHO orders had small bump in excessive deaths. Also average age of dying with COVID was 84. There are no factory workers at Tesla that old.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-...

Re: Existing smartphones will connect with new satellite constellations in 2023

#157
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There literally are, there's very good declassified evidence that has leaked out periodically in small pieces since the mid 1980s that some of what the NSA has are very large satellites with big unfolding umbrella-like antennas aimed directly down at the ground. For SIGINT collection and analysis. Or possibly some combination overlap between the black budget parts of the NRO and NSA. Same size satellite bus as the la…

I believe you're referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(satellite) > The satellites have estimated mass close to 5,200 kg and very large (estimated 100 m diameter)[2] radio reflecting dishes. USA-223 (NROL-32), which is seen as the fifth satellite in the series, is according to NRO director Bruce Carlson "the largest satellite in the world".[3] It is believed that this refers to the diameter of the main an…

The giant unfolding umbrella antenna is not far off from what has been thoroughly commercially publicized for the unclassified commercial first and second gen Thuraya satellites (Boeing 702 bus).

Re: Existing smartphones will connect with new satellite constellations in 2023

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phones do receive data from GPS satellites.

I've run into the reverse misconception, people think they need cell service for GPS to work.

Wifi only iPads and other tablets usually don't have GPS while the cellular versions do.

Re: Existing smartphones will connect with new satellite constellations in 2023

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most upvoted posts are either “oh this person is a god” or “this person just spouts lies” It’s like commenting shouldn’t even be enabled

It's much better that commenting is open, so that people thinking these things can express themselves, and be exposed to different viewpoints, resulting in more thinking and shared knowledge. Without that, an opinion can fester in someone's mind, becoming worse since there's no way to release it and no visible counterarguments. In my younger Slashdot days, I would read these polarized discussions, and it taught me ab…

One thing slashdot dis, that really should have caught on, was cap voting to quite low thresholds (+5 to -3 I think?).

This seemed to be a real equalizer.

Re: Existing smartphones will connect with new satellite constellations in 2023

#160
Unless we get a nuclear exchange, then the starlink chains will drive into each other - and dual use, form a protective shrapnel cloud around the earth stopping ICBMs, explaining the recent hype on fast missiles that can dodge these clouds..
Post reply on HN