Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US agency will not reinstate $900M subsidy for Starlink

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

761–770 of 773 posts

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

#761

Post by _Tev »

lesuorac wrote: post #382
jandrese wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As if cost+ contracting hasn't been a major factor in projects going overbudget and behind schedule. Even with cost+ the contractor needs to provide an estimate up front of both the time and money needed. While it is understood that it is just an estimate, having projects come in for 5x or more of the original estimated cost is egregious. SLS for example was estimated to cost $1.5B, but instead costs $11.2B and still…

> SLS for example was estimated to cost $1.5B I wish it was; lol. The initial estimate was $18B [1]. I suspect you saw the $1.5B number for some sub-component of SLS. That's another common problem with government projects. The media will read some government report that says a new railroad will cost $1B and then report that the entire project will cost $1B while the report only talked about track cost and not about l…

> I do wish NASA would move closer to how DARPA does things where you payout a reward to companies that achieve some milestone.

NASA already does this for a lot of things around ISS and Artemis. SLS is legacy bondoogle pushed by US Senate.

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

#762

Post by mortos »

sinuhe69 wrote: post #693
NelsonMinar wrote: post #288

I'm glad to see the FCC sticking to its requirements and having a testing regime for them. Starlink's own service specifications are far below the 100/20Mbps requirements. They currently are promising 25-100Mbps down, 5-10Mbps up. In congested areas they often don't even deliver that in the evenings. [1] I use Starlink in my rural area and am grateful for it. But hopefully the $900M will be better spent on other ISPs…

I wonder whether you have any data to back up your claim, but other data seem to contradict it. Also see the comment of Luke Lambert on this thread https://gist.github.com/LukeLambert/dd722e49bc773bcb27e859d9...

I suggest reviewing this data again, especially with the understanding that the timestamps are in UTC. 0027 UTC corresponds to 1827 in CST (the timezone for Texas). During prime time, this user was often around 10mbps.

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

#763

Post by inemesitaffia »

notyourwork wrote: post #643
dnissley wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it was pretty obvious, and don't detect any snark. A business/industry gets subsidies and is able to grow faster than it would have or just simply grow where nothing would before. Those businesses are then subject to taxes which the government collects and puts to use, which then benefits the populace at large.

It’s really not all that obvious to me. In particular you’re saying the reason to hand SpaceX nearly a billion is so I can do business with them faster because the subsidy reduces their time to market? If so, that’s a bogus argument in my opinion. I’d prefer a more direct mechanism like ownership and profit sharing. There is plenty of venture capitalists out there, if we can float WeWork, I’m sure there’s people who…

How much are you getting from the other awardees?

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

#764

Post by inemesitaffia »

turquoisevar wrote: post #722
sinuhe69 wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder whether you have any data to back up your claim, but other data seem to contradict it. Also see the comment of Luke Lambert on this thread https://gist.github.com/LukeLambert/dd722e49bc773bcb27e859d9...

Do you have a link to the other data? I’m looking at Lambert’s data, but aside from the problem of sample size, it seems to support the FCC’s reading of the situation. There are barely any samples that hit the required >= 20Mbps up and while it’s easier to spot >= 100Mbps down, it’s far from consistent and seems to be more of a “once a day” occurrence.

In 2025 and in areas covered by RDOF. Not everywhere

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

#765

Post by inemesitaffia »

sangnoir wrote: post #263
rapsey wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VCs are falling over themselves trying to get in on SpaceX. If there were to go public they would immediately be worth hundreds of billions. It will likely be one of the biggest IPOs in history. They are not that strapped for cash.

> They are not that strapped for cash. Exactly - because they were/are getting boatloads of cash from the government. There is no shame in that.

No they haven't as you can read in this article

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

#766

Post by saagarjha »

fomine3 wrote: post #654
8ytecoder wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As a non resident, perhaps it's a good thing. Advanced people eat dogfood with slow connection.

No, you don't understand. The offices have gigabit connections…

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

#767

Post by fragmede »

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…

The future is here, it's just (very) unevenly distributed. There's an IPX in downtown San Francisco so if you have the money for it, you can get 10-gig business class Internet. But if you're principled and don't want to get Comcast, and are in a shorter building so you can't get monkey brains, the local WISP, you get DSL, even in the heart of San Francisco so a friend is on 3Mbit down/128kbps up. Watching streaming at her place is a roll of the dice, so I torrent it at my place and walk it over on a USB drive. She pays for Paramount+ which is where the show we're watching is on, so monetarily I'm okay with myself.

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

#768

Post by zbyte64 »

mulmen wrote: post #577
tcmart14 wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case yes, but in this case we have to assume the research side has achieved it's goal (its proven a material exists with the desired properties), now it is a manufacturing problem. If the lab can't produce the material, the manufacturing lines have nothing to manufacture with. And that seems to be the case with FSD. CEOs make wild claims, but the tech isn't there. The material has not been proven to exist in…

Sure, agree in this case. But the point is that we are all equally capable of being wrong. Especially when we step outside our area of expertise. CEOs are just another type of expert but their domain is organization. We have to consider the source’s experience relative to the domain in question before we can decide if their prediction is trustworthy.

Both might be equally capable but the incentives are entirely different. An Engineer is motivated to deliver accurate predictions because that's their job. A CEO is not motivated to deliver accurate predictions because their main job is to hype their product and services.

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

#770

Post by plumeria »

LukeLambert wrote: post #536
jamroom wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what they use but I've used Speedtest CLI: https://www.speedtest.net/apps/cli works good.

Yep! speedtest -f json -I eth0 I also test the WISP connection on eth1

Thanks for the tip!
Post reply on HN