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US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink

reuters.com

491–500 of 773 posts

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

#491

My parents in rural Northeast Texas use Starlink as their primary connection (they have a WISP as failover). Since Sept. 2022, I've been running automated speed tests four times a day (1 and 7, AM and PM). Speeds vary a lot throughout the day, but average about 100 Mbps down by 10 Mbps up. https://gist.github.com/LukeLambert/dd722e49bc773bcb27e859d9...

Is there any sort of data capping on their plan? Speed tests burn through quite a bit of data

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

#492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair FSD is the hardest software problem that man has ever attempted.

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.

Not many people, even experts, predicted the success of ChatGPT even five years ago - and most have moved their timeline for AGI up significantly because of its release.

AI is a hard field to make predictions in.

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

#493
post #448
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;…

"under-delivering" Delivered millions of EVs that everyone said would never work, dragging the entire car industry out of its stupor. Delivered a vast electric charging network and made it available to the competition. Delivered the best satellite internet. Delivered rockets that NASA uses. Delivered the most payload to space, more than even China. Gee, imagine under-delivering that badly.

"under-delivering" was paired with "over-promising". Elon has done some cool stuff, yeah. He promised cooler stuff and so far it hasn't been possible for lots of reasons. So you are both correct.

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

#494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> […] (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)

To be fair FSD is the hardest software problem that man has ever attempted.

One would think this would be a good reason to not promise that you'll have solved it within a timeframe that's not even remotely realistic

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

#495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This: https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/ (linked in the GGP to your comment) links to this tweet from Jan 23, 2017 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/823727035088416768 When asked the question "At what point will "Full Self-Driving Capability" features noticeably depart from "Enhanced Autopilot" features?" Elon responded "3 months maybe, 6 months definitely" Also, lots of examples of "this year" stated in various January…

> I suspect his statements are carefully made to not technically meet the legal definition for fraud, but colloquially he's absolutely a liar. They're probably not carefully made, but fraud requires knowledge of falsity, and short of an internal report saying "this feature won't be ready before XYZ," it is going to be extremely difficult to prove Tesla knew the claims were false. The other thing you'll run into is re…

> fraud requires knowledge of falsity,

The civil tort of fraud (criminal fraud is different) generally requires either knowledge of falsity or reckless indifference to the truth.

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

#496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think it would be hard to find a reasonable person who takes anything Musk says seriously anymore and yet plenty seem to.

If you're not following Musk every day, and maybe just know he's the Tesla/rocket guy, why wouldn't you take him seriously? Somehow, this sounds like shifting blame from the liar to others ...

I wasn't assigning or shifting blame for anything. I was just expressing that I am baffled by the reality.

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

#497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> […] (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

Is it legal to cheat the foolish and ignorant?

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

#498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This: https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/ (linked in the GGP to your comment) links to this tweet from Jan 23, 2017 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/823727035088416768 When asked the question "At what point will "Full Self-Driving Capability" features noticeably depart from "Enhanced Autopilot" features?" Elon responded "3 months maybe, 6 months definitely" Also, lots of examples of "this year" stated in various January…

> I suspect his statements are carefully made to not technically meet the legal definition for fraud, but colloquially he's absolutely a liar. They're probably not carefully made, but fraud requires knowledge of falsity, and short of an internal report saying "this feature won't be ready before XYZ," it is going to be extremely difficult to prove Tesla knew the claims were false. The other thing you'll run into is re…

>fraud requires knowledge of falsity

Or recklessness as to falsity - like not caring whether the statement was true or false.

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

#499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This: https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/ (linked in the GGP to your comment) links to this tweet from Jan 23, 2017 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/823727035088416768 When asked the question "At what point will "Full Self-Driving Capability" features noticeably depart from "Enhanced Autopilot" features?" Elon responded "3 months maybe, 6 months definitely" Also, lots of examples of "this year" stated in various January…

> I suspect his statements are carefully made to not technically meet the legal definition for fraud, but colloquially he's absolutely a liar. They're probably not carefully made, but fraud requires knowledge of falsity, and short of an internal report saying "this feature won't be ready before XYZ," it is going to be extremely difficult to prove Tesla knew the claims were false. The other thing you'll run into is re…

> with so many deadlines repeatedly blown through, it would be hard to demonstrate that a reasonable person could rely on a representation that a promised deadline would be met.

That enables fraudsters, of course. Also, what about people who don't spend all their time on the Internet, on HN, reading about Elon Musk? They buy stocks and cars too.

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

#500
post #462

My parents in rural Northeast Texas use Starlink as their primary connection (they have a WISP as failover). Since Sept. 2022, I've been running automated speed tests four times a day (1 and 7, AM and PM). Speeds vary a lot throughout the day, but average about 100 Mbps down by 10 Mbps up. https://gist.github.com/LukeLambert/dd722e49bc773bcb27e859d9...

Before starlink my only option was 3MB DSL from Verizon, it was literally life changing as a WFH person to get the 100-200Mbps downloads that Starlink gave me (for $99/month). Fast forward and now I have 1GB symmetrical fiber-to-the-home. Really nice to have that, but the leap from DSL to Starlink was life changing, the leap from Starlink to fiber was merely a minor improvment.

It’s also possible that you would not have gotten fiber in the same timeframe if Starlink hadn’t competed for your business. Companies like Windstream are notorious for gaining regulated monopolies in rural areas, gobbling up government subsidies, only to deliver low bandwidth, saturated service to customers.
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