US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink • Hacker News Board

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

#421

Post by kelnos » Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 8:53 PM UTC

8ytecoder wrote: post #401

mcguire wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yep, completely terrible. My only high-speed choice in a well-developed neighborhood in San Francisco is 1000/35 from Comcast (not like I ever see that 1000, though). AT&T's fiber trunk is a block away from me, but they want $20k+ to run that fiber to my home.

Apparently Comcast has been experimenting/offering higher upload speeds for a while now, but it's still not available where I am.

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

#422

Post by kelnos » Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 8:55 PM UTC

Powdering7082 wrote: post #252

chrisco255 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I regularly get 150+ Mbps on my Starlink terminal. Don't really care that they didn't hit the ambitious goal of providing 300+, it is already more than 15x better than the next best option available for me. T-Mobile has a three decade head start (maybe four if you count their Sprint Wireless acquisition's history), so hardly surprising if there is currently more T-Mobile home internet users than Starlink users. But I…

Yeah there's a pretty common routine of SpaceX & Tesla having some of the best results in the world for what they are trying to accomplish AND being much worse than what was promised.

And that's one of the (many) frustrating things with Musk: he fairly consistently overpromises and underdelivers. Even if that underdelivering is better than what you can get elsewhere, it still leaves a bad taste in people's mouths.

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

#423

Post by FredPret » Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 8:56 PM UTC

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

Oceans are only a defense if you can float a navy on them. The British Islands got invaded a couple of times... until they built a big navy.

Having two oceans is great, but now you need at least two fleets.

Nukes are only worth something if you have a lot of them and can credibly delivery them in multiple ways. Now you need subs, long-range bombers and the fighters to protect them, and missile silos.

Now add in reliance on a global supply chain (many types of oil and minerals, grades of steel not made in the US, TSMC), and all of a sudden you need to be able to help protect your partners on the other side of the world.

Now sprinkle in a couple of crazy dictators with nuclear arsenals and huge armies of their own, and it's starting to make sense why the US military needs constant re-investment.

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

#424

Post by kelnos » Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 8:58 PM UTC

madaxe_again wrote: post #272

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;…

I get 300/30 on starlink. I’m not sure why ookla’s data says otherwise.

Because you are not everyone who uses Starlink? Just because you get good speeds, it doesn't mean that the average Starlink user does as well.

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

#425

Post by throwaway4aday » Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 8:59 PM UTC

JumpinJack_Cash wrote: post #361

madaxe_again wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve got news for you about Earth-based networking gear. You don’t just install it and forget about it forever - you replace and upgrade, almost continuously, and lifespans are frequently significantly less than five years.

A 1000Gbps cable laid down in the ground will be able to support 1000Gbps even 50 years from now provided that it doesn't get truncated by accident or Earthquake

a cable is pretty useless without all of the other hardware

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

#426

Post by throwaway4aday » Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 9:01 PM UTC

alwa wrote: post #170

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to tell due to the redactions, but it seems like Starlink brought Starship into the discussion as part of the explanation of how it would have the technical capability to deliver the service.

I’m an unqualified casual observer and working from memory, but I seem to remember capacity and throughput promises related to the “Starlink 2.0” satellites, which Mr. Musk claims are “an order of magnitude better” than the current birds on unspecified measures [0], and without which Starlink couldn’t credibly deliver the promised service to the promised number of households in the promised time to earn the subsidy […

do you mean v3 instead of v2? I thought they already had v2 in service but just weren't able to launch very many of them on falcon

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

#427

Post by kelnos » Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 9:01 PM UTC

lesuorac wrote: post #308

jandrese wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it impressive that the government is actually punishing a project for running late and underdelivering. They should expand this to all parts of the government. Can you imagine if the F-35 was cancelled the first time it fell behind schedule? The Space Launch System? The Littoral Combat System? The USS JFK? So many boondoggles could be killed off before they spend money. Maybe contractors would have to start pr…

I think you may not understand what the government is. The government is a collection of individuals. It is not a single borg instance. Some individuals within that collection are going to act different than other ones. Also the government does a lot of funding through different mechanisms. Many miltiary programs are a cost+ program where they pay the contractor the cost of development plus a profit% so the initial b…

The problem with cost+ is that contractors can inflate the actual cost of things, and pocket the difference. Obviously they can't do this to an unlimited extent, but the cynic in me would have a hard time believing this isn't a common practice.

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

#428

Post by KennyBlanken » Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 9:02 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #422

Powdering7082 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah there's a pretty common routine of SpaceX & Tesla having some of the best results in the world for what they are trying to accomplish AND being much worse than what was promised.

And that's one of the (many) frustrating things with Musk: he fairly consistently overpromises and underdelivers. Even if that underdelivering is better than what you can get elsewhere, it still leaves a bad taste in people's mouths.

> he fairly consistently overpromises and underdelivers.

Can we please just call it what it really is? Lying. He's a pathological liar.

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

#429

Post by JumpinJack_Cash » Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 9:03 PM UTC

alsodumb wrote: post #420

JumpinJack_Cash wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proof is everywhere when you look at products manufactured by Musk companies They are all based on re-inventing the wheel (quite literally) for political purposes and government money extraction. You'll never find the guy developing something that customers really want such as self-checkout system that doesn't suck, because there is no Government money to be extracted from it.

Let's see, Tesla is reinventing the wheel for extracting government money extraction? They make a solid profit on each car they sell. You gonna bring up the loan. But that loan was repaid in full by Tesla, ahead of time, where as Ford and other who also got similar loans defaulted on it. You going to bring up EV subsidies - but that's open to every automaker and Tesla is probably the only company that can make a marg…

Tesla is the signal that the American Empire is collapsing, it's a company that is based on the political idea that it's necessary to change the transportation pollutant from oil to lithium.

It's the same old car ownership experience that our grandfathers experienced in 1970s, Tesla was founded in 2002 and I can find cars from that year on the used market which are more aestetically pleasing and have much better interiors quality and still beat Tesla cars (or should I say boats given how heavy they are?) around a racetrack which is the true measure of a car performance. Picture this , a 20 year old Mercedes or BMW with better interior and better looks can beat a brand new 2023 Tesla lap time around Laguna Seca or the Nurburgring , and also it will be able to go around the track for hours and hours whereas the Tesla would overheat and leave you stranded on lap 2.

We are going backwards in the name of politics, that cannot be accepted quitely, it's stupid and un-American. Solely done in the name of politics and Government money extraction.

> > Customers really wanted SpaceX

90% of global population lives in urban areas, that's only going to increase, so that's 90% who will never need SpaceX. You have to go and pick your sample with a searchlight to get the result you want, and even then only about 30% are going to be happy with the service considering that SpaceX is cutting their download speed all the time compared to what they clocked at the time of first installation, that's predatory.

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

#430

Post by KennyBlanken » Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 9:04 PM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #130

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;…

I regularly get 150+ Mbps on my Starlink terminal. Don't really care that they didn't hit the ambitious goal of providing 300+, it is already more than 15x better than the next best option available for me. T-Mobile has a three decade head start (maybe four if you count their Sprint Wireless acquisition's history), so hardly surprising if there is currently more T-Mobile home internet users than Starlink users. But I…

> I regularly get 150+ Mbps on my Starlink terminal.

Your anecdotal experience is not a refuting of statistical data from the overall population of users. Starlink consistently does not provide that level of service to a large swath of its users.