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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

#471

Post by deepsun »

aeturnum wrote: post #373
bryanlarsen wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo deployed cars without safety drivers to Tempe in 2021.

This is always a game of boundary-setting. In one way that's true, in another way Waymo is 21+ years behind[1]. People have been setting up 'particular vehicles' to navigate 'particular areas' for decades. If the Waymo "self driving car" is an expansion of older site-specific tech, then there's nothing new under the sun. If their car is can be put anywhere then it just being able to drive in Tempe isn't proof of that…

By the way, Particular Vehicles have been safely serving Particular Areas for decades: airport driverless shuttles. Slowly expanding from there is the right way to go, not "New York to Palo Alto by 2017", as Musk promised.

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

#472

Post by deepsun »

acdha wrote: post #351
fragmede wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, AGI seems like a hard problem too.

FSD is a substantial subset of AGI: driving is full of edge cases where you need to be able to reason about unusual conditions or behavior by other drivers, understand what someone like a flagger or police officer is saying, etc.

Not necessarily -- we can have AGI, but it might be too resource-intensive to put in a mobile platform like a car.

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

#473

Post by bmitc »

thot_experiment wrote: post #443
bmitc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a very marginal issue, folks need to calm down. Is it? Why do we need to visually see, basically permanently, a ring or string of lights in the sky, unwittingly, just because of some billionaire? > You can predict where the satellites are going to be and avoid them. That doesn't make sense. It doesn't matter if you know where they're at if they're in your way. Telescope time is extremely precious and expens…

> Is it? Why do we need to visually see, basically permanently, a ring or string of lights in the sky, unwittingly, just because of some billionaire? There are upsides also. > You can predict where the satellites are going to be and avoid them. You could for example not collect from the relevant photosites during transit, we're not using photographic plates anymore. This is not some sort of insurmountable problem, I'…

> You absolutely can't see them in the earth's penumbra

I have seen them with my own eyes and they've been filmed. It's just not correct. It's particularly visible when the sun is hitting them. You can find several photos and videos of them from the ground.

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

#474

Post by aeturnum »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #385
aeturnum wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is always a game of boundary-setting. In one way that's true, in another way Waymo is 21+ years behind[1]. People have been setting up 'particular vehicles' to navigate 'particular areas' for decades. If the Waymo "self driving car" is an expansion of older site-specific tech, then there's nothing new under the sun. If their car is can be put anywhere then it just being able to drive in Tempe isn't proof of that…

Oh, come on, these kinds of false analogies don't help to elucidate, only to confuse. There is a universe of difference between something like ParkShuttle (its own right of way, using magnets in the road to detect position) and modern autonomous vehicles. Saying modern autonomous vehicles have environmental constraints is valid, saying that makes then no different than a "people mover on wheels" is not.

So my analogy is false huh? Then say a true one!

The point is that "deployed to a limited area" is not what people are thinking when they talk about a "self driving car." Of course ParkShuttle isn't the same as Waymo (or any other modern self-driving car) - but the question is how far we've come!

Are you claiming Waymo is ready to drive anywhere in the world? I do not think that's Waymo's position. So where are we? Cut through the rhetoric and tell it like it is - or join the rest of us who are speculating from the sidelines with incomplete information.

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

#475

Post by bmitc »

gunapologist99 wrote: post #367
bmitc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a very marginal issue, folks need to calm down. Is it? Why do we need to visually see, basically permanently, a ring or string of lights in the sky, unwittingly, just because of some billionaire? > You can predict where the satellites are going to be and avoid them. That doesn't make sense. It doesn't matter if you know where they're at if they're in your way. Telescope time is extremely precious and expens…

Focal points. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_(optics)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

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

#476

Post by jrflowers »

grecy wrote: post #277
manuelabeledo wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Starlink service is so obviously phenomenal to anyone who's used it, this isn't going to change that or effect SpaceX's success one bit. Starlink success, and to that extent, SpaceX, are arguably tied to government money. I would say that not getting almost $1B may impact their operations quite a bit.

> Starlink success, and to that extent, SpaceX, are arguably tied to government money. Citation please. The government are paying SpaceX as a customer, they're not giving them free money. Also note they're paying them a lot less than they pay ULA for the same things

This is a good point. So long as you define “government money” as “something other than money from the government”, SpaceX does not rely on government money.

You can see that this is true with other businesses as well, no business relies on getting “customer money” because “customer money” means when customers donate to you in exchange for nothing, not money that they pay in exchange for goods or services.

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

#477

Post by aeturnum »

deepsun wrote: post #471
aeturnum wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is always a game of boundary-setting. In one way that's true, in another way Waymo is 21+ years behind[1]. People have been setting up 'particular vehicles' to navigate 'particular areas' for decades. If the Waymo "self driving car" is an expansion of older site-specific tech, then there's nothing new under the sun. If their car is can be put anywhere then it just being able to drive in Tempe isn't proof of that…

By the way, Particular Vehicles have been safely serving Particular Areas for decades: airport driverless shuttles. Slowly expanding from there is the right way to go, not "New York to Palo Alto by 2017", as Musk promised.

Yah, without any evidence to back it up my personal suspicion is that we'll arrive at a local maxima of "full self driving on highways and instrumented roads" in ~20 years. I think the area has a lot of potential, but so much of the hype (and stock price) is tied up with "a car that can drive better than a human everywhere" which seems impossible for anyone to produce.

Just like with IoT we'll eventually arrive at a boring, useful state...it will just take a while.

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

#478

Post by _fizz_buzz_ »

ren_engineer wrote: post #94
_ea1k wrote: post #62

If the goal is to get levels of performance that Starlink cannot provide, then this makes sense? Odd that they'd include comments about Starship in it, though. That doesn't seem like a requirement for continued development of Starlink and seems very speculative. There could be details on that aspect that I'm missing though.

>If the goal is to get levels of performance that Starlink cannot provide, then this makes sense? no, because the only reason Starlink doesn't currently hit the metrics is due to them having so many users joining. They could hit the metrics by temporarily halting signups, cutting off users, or delaying the Pentagon's massive deployment project. Or Musk could cut off Ukraine's capacity, which the US military admits is…

> Or Musk could cut off Ukraine's capacity, which the US military admits is consuming hundreds of millions in Starlink capacity that could be allocated to US consumers to speed up their internet

That doesn’t sound right. Satellites over Ukraine cannot be reached anywhere from the US and they also wouldn’t use the same gateways. So I could see the use of starlink in Ukraine possibly slowing service in Europe. But I cannot see how it would affect customers in the US.

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

#479

Post by peterfirefly »

FredPret wrote: post #423
tehjoker wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 relia…

Don't forget satellites and SIGINT (which just might involve crazy submarines and big "scientific" radio astronomy dishes). Or cover stories about ships and manganese extraction worthy of James Bond.

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

#480

Post by tomcam »

itslennysfault wrote: post #468
tomcam wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> T-Mobile is likely serving more rural high speed internet customers with greater speeds I live exactly 13 miles away from T-Mobile HQ (one city over) and their service was unusable. I know, I know, anecdotal. But funny!

When I was living in Seattle I found the service to be shockingly bad. I "upgraded" to 5G and my service got substantially worse. I'd often have "full signal 5G" and barely be able to watch videos in Capitol Hill. I worked in SoDo and I found multiple dead zones between the train station and my work (just a few blocks). For a while I was tweeting at them regularly with screenshots, but got bored of the "DM us so we c…

> got bored of the "DM us so we can resolve this right away" bots and realized I was screaming into the void

You’re giving me PTSD here lol

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