211–219 of 219 posts
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… and the SpaceX service works with any ordinary modern phone. Not just the latest iPhone with special hardware.
Well it requires a 5G phone. And Apple's service is not just the latest iPhones.
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… and the SpaceX service works with any ordinary modern phone. Not just the latest iPhone with special hardware.
It's not special hardware. They are just utilizing the underlying capabilities of their the Qualcomm broadband chip. Anyone else using the same chip can add satellite functionality too.
SpaceX service, on the other hand, works with pre-existing 4G/LTE phones of any brand, with no special hardware requirements.
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China is as free as the US. You can leave the country and emigrate to the US, and that's why there are so many Chinese everywhere. No, it's not Orwellian any more and people do not carry a "little red book" with them. Chinese people can choose their jobs, start a company, pursue hobbies like rock climbing and guitar and gardening and live basically like most westerners.
Except you can't have certain political opinions without going to jail, that's a pretty big difference.
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Except you can't have certain political opinions without going to jail, that's a pretty big difference.
I feel like - and I don’t mean to do the whataboutism thing, but… - that rings a lot less true to me after BLM and the border patrol tear gassing grandmas. Arguably it’s better here, but like, I feel like the boot comes down more or less the same.
I feel like this will eventually kill dedicated sat phones, which are (a) horribly expensive, both for the gear and subscription plans, and (b) still not very reliable. I feel like if Starlink is able to provide reliable SMS-only service at a reasonable price, it would kill like 95% of dedicated sat phone use cases, which would then make the other 5% economically unviable.
Never bet against the cell phone. I never believed cell phones would swallow satellite phones. I mean, they swallowed everything else but I didn't think they could connect to space. But they can!
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I feel like - and I don’t mean to do the whataboutism thing, but… - that rings a lot less true to me after BLM and the border patrol tear gassing grandmas. Arguably it’s better here, but like, I feel like the boot comes down more or less the same.
It's absolutely whataboutism. Just because bad stuff happens in doesn't mean America is authoritarian. It has many many flaws but it's one of the few places where checks and balances still work, for now.
I’m not saying China is “better.” But, like shit is pretty bad here in a lot of ways. I think it’s folly to look at them with much of a sense of superiority.
Now, Russia? Russia is real messed up… but that wasn’t the topic of conversation here. I don’t see much practical difference between BORTAC tear gassing grandmas and Hong Kong protesters getting tear gassed.
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> I don't know if this has been announced before... When they announced the original deal with T-Mobile, they said that T-Mobile would handle the (spectrum) license for the US and they're looking for a partner in other countries with the appropriate spectrum licensing. US T-Mobile customers would have access to this SpaceX service in any country where there is a partner with the spectrum license. https://www.t-mobile…
I disagree that Apple's capability is similar. The feature only allows texting emergency services, requires holding the phone in a specific orientation to send or receive, is separate from your carrier service (only two years are free with purchase), and is exceedingly slow. SpaceX's service will allow texting and receiving texts from anyone using your carrier number, plans to support third party messaging apps such…