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US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink

reuters.com

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Re: US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink

#401

Post by 8ytecoder »

mcguire wrote: post #376
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell I work at a farm on the coast near Silicon Valley in San Gregorio (designing a farming robot) and Starlink is the only decent internet option we’ve ever had.

What speeds do you get? Edit: That's weird. San Gregorio is like 15-20 miles from Cupertino. Here in Jackson County, AL, Farmers Telecom Coop has gigabit or half-gigabit fiber to much of the county.

Bay Area’s fiber and broadband network is a joke. That it’s the tech capital of the world makes it so much worse. Things are improving - I got fiber in 2020 - and speeds are trending upwards with some local completion. AT&T and Comcast are finally getting a bit better with speed. Coverage still sucks. Number of available options still suck. Not to mention weird collusions between Comcast and apt management companies and other anti-competitive behaviour. Then there’s PG&E using various excuses to block using their poles to expand the network.

It’s terrible.

Re: US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink

#402

Post by tehjoker »

> The two Republican commissioners on the five-member FCC dissented from the decision saying the FCC was improperly holding SpaceX to 2025 targets three years early and suggesting the Biden administration's anger toward Musk was to blame.

didn't elon switch off starlink for ukrainian forces in the middle of an attack that one time?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/07/elon-musk...

Re: US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink

#403

Post by LamaOfRuin »

DoesntMatter22 wrote: post #344
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watched a panel discussion on self driving cars in 2015 with several legit experts in the technology (I believe Sebastian Thrun was one of them). There were also some CEOs. The experts all said there’s no way the tech would deploy before 2025, potentially later. The CEOs were saying 2018 or 2019. The experts had a clear view way back then, the CEOs just don’t want to listen.

Experts are wrong all the time. The experts said that solar prices would come down but were off by nearly an order of magnitude in how long it took. With something this hard it's extremely tough to tell for sure when it will happen and often progress goes in chunks where it seems like it's going to happen but then doesnt.

Many experts predicted price declines with pretty fair accuracy. The large groups of experts that were making these forecasts for purposes of global planning for mitigation of climate change were often intentionally conservative because the danger of planning with that assumption outweighs anything you lose by making more conservative predictions.

Re: US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink

#404

Post by mcguire »

trident5000 wrote: post #28
I_Am_Nous wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read that letter, and was unconvinced that it's anything more than the FCC not wanting to gamble with nearly 1/16th of the total RDOF grant money (for that round) and would rather give it to a company that can be reasonably expected to hit the obligatory throughput. If Starlink bid for 25/3 they might have made it.

You can arrive at your own conclusion. I think its pretty obvious whats happening here (the commissioners voted along party lines right down the middle). And theres no other company thats even close to Starlink now or in the medium term future. So I dont know who would practically fill this spot. For below comment: This is for "rural" connection. You're not laying wire for that regardless of what Comcast wants you to…

Farmer's Telecom Coop service map, Jackson County and nearby, AL.

https://connect.farmerstel.com/front_end/zones

Yes, it's fiber. Yes, to the home. Currently, 93Mbps down, 83 Mbps up (but I have the cheap service). And the service is a crap-ton better than that of Spectrum in NC.

Re: US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink

#405

Post by skygazer »

zbyte64 wrote: post #386
DoesntMatter22 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Experts are wrong all the time. The experts said that solar prices would come down but were off by nearly an order of magnitude in how long it took. With something this hard it's extremely tough to tell for sure when it will happen and often progress goes in chunks where it seems like it's going to happen but then doesnt.

I agree with all of this, but if the problem is too hard for the expert, why would I listen to a billionaire/CEO?

He also does dubiously claim to be an expert in many fields, although despite the success of the engineers working for him, his greatest personal expertise appears to be sycophant creation — competence can only propel one so far.

Although one should never believe the ravings, useful work does surprisingly often nucleate around them, just not to the degree or with the speed promised.

Re: US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink

#406

Post by bryanlarsen »

cycomanic wrote: post #371
bryanlarsen wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo deployed cars without safety drivers to Tempe in 2021.

I'd argue even waymo is still far away from FSD. Driverless cars on a restricted set of roads with a remote operator monitoring things (and the ability to quickly resolve issues), is nowhere close to what I (and the general public I would argue) understands as fully self driving.

Sure, if you set the goalposts in a place that's unachievable we'll never reach them.

- even human drivers cannot safely operate in all locations/conditions

- all self-driving cars will need a mechanism for cops to talk to a human

Re: US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink

#407

Post by coffeebeqn »

throw0101c wrote: post #234
mdasen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starlink (and Musk in general) have been over-promising and under-delivering for years now. Starlink claimed 150Mbps back in 2020 and that speeds would double to 300Mbps by the end of 2021.[1] Instead, speeds have halved.[2] At this point, T-Mobile is likely serving more rural high speed internet customers with greater speeds (T-Mobile has 4.2M home internet customers and Ookla's stats show 34% to be rural for 1.4M;…

> […] (and Musk in general) have been over-promising and under-delivering for years now. Related, "Tesla FSD Timeline": > September 2014: They will be a factor of 10 safer than a person [at the wheel] in a six-year time frame * https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/ * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38625380 (earlier today)

At this point anyone who takes his claims at face value is a fool

Re: US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink

#408

Post by adolph »

tehjoker wrote: post #402

> The two Republican commissioners on the five-member FCC dissented from the decision saying the FCC was improperly holding SpaceX to 2025 targets three years early and suggesting the Biden administration's anger toward Musk was to blame. didn't elon switch off starlink for ukrainian forces in the middle of an attack that one time? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/07/elon-musk...

No, Starlink services were never turned on for portions of Ukraine previously occupied by Russia such as Crimea.

On Friday, Isaacson tweeted a clarification, writing that “the Ukrainians THOUGHT coverage was enabled all the way to Crimea, but it was not. They asked Musk to enable it for their drone sub attack on the Russian fleet. Musk did not enable it, because he thought, probably correctly, that would cause a major war.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/sep/12/elon-musk-biog...

Re: US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink

#409

Post by altairprime »

pmorici wrote: post #230
altairprime wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your basic service tier is lower than 100/20, you would be disqualified for the subsidy.

That's not how it works, they just need to offer a service tier that provides a service with the required minimums by a particular date, it is obviously possible unless you are blinded by revenge politics.

I see. I've misunderstood the broadband auctions, and have reviewed https://www.fcc.gov/auction/904 to determine more correctly what's going on here.

All, please disregard my comment and refer instead to this top comment instead:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38628276

Re: US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink

#410

Post by [deleted] »

tehjoker wrote: post #399
atty wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, defense is an existential risk for the US and its allies. NATO can’t really afford to not have a reasonably up-to-date combat jet. They also need to continually feed money into the military industrial complex so that suppliers don’t go under/downsize too much/etc. Not disagreeing with your sentiment, just think that certain fields like defense, healthcare, etc have slightly different priority lists.

> defense is an existential risk for the US this is not a true statement for a huge country with oceans on 2 sides and nukes. it is a true statement about people relying on the us military to make money tho

[deleted]
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