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

Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

starlink.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 374 posts

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#281

Post by hollerith »

chgs wrote: post #205
FredPret wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah. All of the 25 000 000 000 000 dollars the US generates a year is vacuumed right out of the palm trees of the third world.

It relies almost entirely on the massive US might, military, cultural, diplomatic.

I marvel at how confused some people are to actually believe that Americans are rich because they steal wealth from other peoples. Amazing!

The US does meddle a lot with other countries, but the main motive IMHO is usually either to further some misguided ideological program or to keep Americans safe (kind of like how Russia's interference in Ukraine these days is motivated by a desire to keep Russians safe in future decades) not to extract wealth.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#282

Post by svnt »

inemesitaffia wrote: post #259
svnt wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, offering the service probably has some marginal cost, but I am positive it is well within their projected (and profitable) CAC. People who are donating have zero chance of a positive financial outcome. That is why it is called a donation.

If you donate anything you have an immediate real or opportunity cost. You can't take that away.

If you donate something that is spare capacity on infrastructure that has a marginal cost of the data outflow from your servers on earth, and the customer has to buy aging hardware that you are also sitting on inventory of, and that hardware is ASP $300-$600, it is not a donation.

It is extremely likely that your marginal costs for that month are only internet transit/egress to the tune of less than $0.05 per GB, and you soft cap their access such that maybe 100 GB is their practical limit for the month, you just sold a $300 device that sales were slowing on for worst-case $295, with a likely future revenue stream.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#283

Post by svnt »

inemesitaffia wrote: post #260
svnt wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is marketing on the back of a natural disaster. Again, a nice gesture is actual charity, not a “the first month is free” promotional cliche.

It's actual charity addressing a particular expressed and asked for need. Someone who had dishes asked for this. It's not a wouldn't this be nice gift. Someone needed this enough to ask for this

Ok, I went and looked and the free 30-day trial was already in place weeks before the natural disaster:

https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/starlink-internet-review/

They didn’t do anything but offer the same deal they would to anyone else.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#284

Post by FredPret »

hollerith wrote: post #281
chgs wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It relies almost entirely on the massive US might, military, cultural, diplomatic.

I marvel at how confused some people are to actually believe that Americans are rich because they steal wealth from other peoples. Amazing! The US does meddle a lot with other countries, but the main motive IMHO is usually either to further some misguided ideological program or to keep Americans safe (kind of like how Russia's interference in Ukraine these days is motivated by a desire to keep Russians safe in future…

The poor world simply does not have enough wealth / resources / GDP to “supply” the rich world, especially the US, with its ridiculous levels of wealth so that argument falls flat right out the gate.

US meddling is, as you say, a function of them already having a ton of money and trying to use it to pursue their foreign policy.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#285

Post by aguaviva »

hollerith wrote: post #281
chgs wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It relies almost entirely on the massive US might, military, cultural, diplomatic.

I marvel at how confused some people are to actually believe that Americans are rich because they steal wealth from other peoples. Amazing! The US does meddle a lot with other countries, but the main motive IMHO is usually either to further some misguided ideological program or to keep Americans safe (kind of like how Russia's interference in Ukraine these days is motivated by a desire to keep Russians safe in future…

(kind of like how Russia's interference in Ukraine these days is motivated by a desire to keep Russians safe in future decades)

Well, that's the motivation it pretends/claims to have in any case.

But you're right in that its pretenses/delusions are very similar to the US's in this regard.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#286

Post by parl_match »

h0l0cube wrote: post #175
parl_match wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you spent 10 minutes running the numbers, you'd probably answer your question pretty handily.

Depends on the price of batteries, which are rapidly declining. Within the next few years the numbers will change in favor of batteries. Though it also depends on the load and having enough space/sunlight for the solar array

My quick math came up short on batteries. But as you say, it's worth running those numbers every year. I can't imagine I'll be sitting here in 2030 saying "batteries aren't there yet".

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#287

Post by caeril »

threeseed wrote: post #130
kortilla wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 700Gbps max per cell > having extremely low customer density I think you need to define “extremely low” because 700gbps is plenty for several thousand people. And the question was specifically about everyone in rural areas switching. If you go by rural being That sounds fine considering standard consumer usage patterns mean you’ll get 10x that as an individual even in peak times. That’s also assuming maximum densit…

> that lands at 7.2 mbps per person Which is ridiculously poor. This would simply create a digital divide further increasing inequality in rural areas.

Unbelievable how much millennials and zoomers are spoiled. I remember when I got my first DSL line at 384kbps symmetric in 1999, I was absolutely over the moon ELATED.

Sure, 7mbps may not be good enough to supply the demands of your multi-screen 4k UHD loli goon cave, but it's more than enough to send a Try to get some perspective.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#288

Post by sneak »

ivewonyoung wrote: post #277
sneak wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In short, the Ukrainians (with whom it is indeed legal to do business) wanted to use Starlink as c&c for drone strikes in occupied Crimea. It was off, per sanctions (and other reasons) as you note. SpaceX was opposed to turning it back on, presumably wishing to stay out of the geopolitical calculus of the war. They do have a rather lot to lose if war extends to space. The DoD overruled them, either via requirements f…

A few clarifications and corrections: > wanted to use Starlink as c&c for drone strikes in occupied Crimea They sent a last second request after realizing Starlink wasn't on in Crimea. Essentially asking SpaceX to violate US law and sanctions. > SpaceX was opposed to turning it back on You cannot turn something back on if it was never on in the first place. I see this phrasing everywhere, it's so strange. I guess peo…

It is illegal to do business with entities in Crimea. It’s not illegal to offer Starlink to Ukrainian entities operating there. The sanctions are a red herring, they have nothing to do with this.

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#289

Post by seadan83 »

inemesitaffia wrote: post #261
seadan83 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Appalachia has some of the highest poverty rates in the country. They don't have money for food, let alone a $120/month service that they can get for cheaper via cellular data or conventional ISP At worse this is a non-gesture. For the actual relief effort itself, those travelling to do rescue - starlink has its use cases (as would a satellite and sat phones, but starlink does somewhat shine for first responder use c…

It might not have meaning for you, but someone on the ground had a real need and asked for it. These people can't get Internet via WiFi or cellular and you know it. This is concern trolling at best

Asteroid stated earlier: "At worse this is nice gesture "

I mostly wanted to correct that to say at worse it is a non gesture. Somewhat helping a couple hundred people out of a million plus, is not quite the "nice" gesture. Particularly a relatively poor population. IDK, a pedantic debate of "nice and meaningful" vs "nice but not significant" is not interesting. Non-gesture I would equate to the latter. It is not like 10k of these devices were rushed in, fully activated, on the second day when it would have counted most.

The help here is now coming late. 5 days ago (Monday) and this would have been much more helpful. To boot, just "first month free"

Which is my same response when you say someone, yeah that is some people. Not many, does not really move the needle as much as it could. Though, for those where this first month free was helpful - that is great. Except overall, "first month free" is not really a gamechanger for the significant population on the ground. Find specific evidence otherwise if you want to make that claim. I'll be in the area in a week or two, I'll ask about this.

> This is concern trolling at best

Concern trolling vs savior complex.. The quality of this dialogue is now severely degraded after this insult.

My family is in western NC not far outside of Asheville. Town of 100k. For _all_ of them, this "gesture" is meaningless since both factors of cell phone coverage and money are at play. Cell phone coverage (for SMS) came back online last sunday, and they reported to me a lot of people are badly off because the end of month paycheck was not soon enough and those people could not buy supplies in preparation.

I do not know where you are located. I have the impression this forum is dominated by people that don't understand how poor rural parts of the country can be. Appalachia is one of the very poor parts of the country. Poverty rates in western NC are typically 15 to 20% [1]. Per capita income in appalachia is roughly $40k [2] (consider the implications for the distribution). About 1.2M people [3] in western NC, with 200k of them unable to even buy food. As far as pre-existing deployments, $300 for a starlink and $120/month is way out of the question.

I don't see the numbers working out where a "first month is free", even with the device being donated as all that terribly useful en masse here.

Though, in fairness, I do see utility to have a starlink on the back of a pickup truck with a bunch of supplies heading into a small, cut-off, town of 100 and then coordinating further relief effort. At the same time, supplies and evac are more priority. Which is to say, the use case where I think this shines is for emergency workers. Again, first month free is meaningless there.

Worst case, yeah - essentially a non-gesture (worst case)

[1] https://www.arc.gov/map/poverty-rates-in-appalachia-2013-201...

[2] https://www.arc.gov/map/per-capita-income-rates-in-appalachi...

Re: Starlink offering free internet access for 30 days for Hurricane Helene victims

#290

Post by caeril »

why_at wrote: post #139
threeseed wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that lands at 7.2 mbps per person Which is ridiculously poor. This would simply create a digital divide further increasing inequality in rural areas.

>This would simply create a digital divide further increasing inequality in rural areas. Not sure what you mean? The more remote you get the better your bandwidth gets because you are sharing it with fewer people. This is the opposite of most ISPs which tend to ignore rural areas.

The primary use-case for high-bandwidth consumer connections is streaming brain-rotting video content in UHD. OP is suggesting that people without access to said connections will end up with increased inequality because they won't be able to spend their time on Love Is Blind marathons.

My personal experience, as someone who has lived in, and worked from, rural areas with limited bandwidth, is that latency (for SSH connections) is the only thing that matters for learning and productivity.

But OP clearly knows better, because if we just gave everyone gigabit fiber, the access to UHD Pornhub, Netflix, Amazon Video, etc, will instantly correct the "digital divide". And OP has a point. I know someone who started designing > 500k qubit quantum computers with > 5s coherence after spending two weeks straight watching all seasons of My 600Lb Life.

He kept mumbling something about "It's not in the box, it's in the band"

Post reply on HN