A quick glance at these comments indicates the majority are excited about Starlink. I must be in the minority. Is anyone else here on HN very unhappy with the prospect of having no place to escape internet access? I love the idea of no-rescue zones. https://www.pennstatelawreview.org/print-issues/hike-at-your... Not trying to change anyone's mind, just wondering if I'm a complete outlier.
Starlink Direct to Cell
251–260 of 831 posts
Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#252A quick glance at these comments indicates the majority are excited about Starlink. I must be in the minority. Is anyone else here on HN very unhappy with the prospect of having no place to escape internet access? I love the idea of no-rescue zones. https://www.pennstatelawreview.org/print-issues/hike-at-your... Not trying to change anyone's mind, just wondering if I'm a complete outlier.
You already have the option of escaping internet access, anywhere in the world – by turning off your device.
Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wasn't there a shareholder suite that alleged the directors aren't independent because of the above-standard Tesla options they receive? Robyn Denholm excecised and sold $35M worth of TSLA in the past month.
> Wasn't there a shareholder suite that alleged the directors aren't independent because of the above-standard Tesla options they receive? Has a court accepted that argument? I mean, you can come up with all sorts of grounds to claim an independent director isn’t really independent, but unless a court with jurisdiction accepts the argument, it doesn’t really count for anything.
HN is a court of law: some things may fail to meet some legal test, but not that in no way means it automatically becomes subjectively "right". I am adding a datapoint on what's arguable and leaving the judgement of cogency to the reader.
My previously-unstated opinion is: remunerating directors like executives blurs the distinction between those 2 roles in ways that are likely detrimental to long-term shareholders.
Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not going to work inside buildings, and they would need to charge you a fairly astronomical fee per minute. However, a Starlink mini dish can let you cheaply make calls from basically anywhere with some minor setup.
Could future versions work in buildings? What’s the issue there? Just that it’s father away than a cell tower is?
Starlink signals are essentially line of sight right now. The bump up in power to penetrate even a single layer of drywall is almost certainly way outside the power budget of a Starlink satellite.
Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#255> ENGINEERED BY SPACEX It would be very interesting to see some kind of diagram depicting all of the corporate entities Musk is involved in and how each entity does business with one another. xAI just raised billions to help Tesla build out FSD (or at least that was part of the pitch). His empire is divided into so many corporate entities, but they all cross-pollinate and are clearly under his direct control for the…
＞ His empire is divided into so many corporate entities, but they all cross-pollinate and are clearly under his direct control for the most part. It's not unusual for large companies to have a large web of corporate entities, but what's problematic is that they have different ownership rather than the same owners/owned by each other. (I started to say that one is public and others private, but it would be the same is…
Recall that Elon re-domiciled from “activist” Delaware to… whatever you call Texas and it’s reputation for corporate governance.
And now, he’s becoming some sort of circus act to disrupt the bureaucracy of the Federal government. So I wouldn’t count on the SEC doing anything.
Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#256If anyone from Starlink or SpaceX is reading these comments here’s what you want to do: Sell your own branded trail cam with solar charging and LTE from orbit. You can charge $25-$40 a month for unlimited pictures sent from the cam. This would open up hunters, nature enthusiasts, and researchers to be able to place their hardware anywhere in the field without worrying about connectivity. Here in SWVA we have deep hol…
$25-$40 is insane. Spypoint offers 250 pics for free a month and 1000 for $6 a month. As long as you can connect to a cell tower (1 bar is enough). That probably covers 80 % of hunt properties.
Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's similar (ish), but I think unfortunately the comparison distracts from your core point and observation. Musk Inc. is, in essence, a privet equity company. He raises a fund, and invests it along with his own cash into a business he knows well, and with which he believes he can disrupt the status quo. He's very hands on, understanding all the important core details, setting culture, and pushing hard . But he also…
I agree with you, yet in a somewhat different way. He is an investor investing in science fiction. This isn't even implied, he comes out and says it again and again. I'm reminded of xerox parc's "The best way to predict the future is to invent it" and I think that's his philosophy. As to "businesses he knows well" I do not agree. He didn't go into electric vehicles, rockets, robots or neural interfaces as "business h…
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Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
For that, Starlink would have to use the frequency band that the phone (and, therefore, the relevant operator) is using. Such frequencies are assigned by states to operators, and using them from space would be extremely easy to detect. That is why Starlink either has to make a deal with in operators, or acquire a licence to use a frequency band in every country it wants to operate. I assume that if Starlink was tryin…
> If the USA did not, I don't see what would prevent China from shooting down Starlink's constellation. Except China, does any other country have the ability to do this? With US government permission, Starlink could ignore the radio licensing rules of Iran, South Africa or even the EU.
It then turn down to "soft" warfare. Iran will give some guy a missile to shoot your cargo ship. I'd like them to do that for countries that can't do anything though (ie: some countries in Africa). Good for the citizenry and no side-effects.
Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#259this is listed under the "business" section. must not be planned for direct-to-consumer initially.
T-Mobile is claiming it will be available to anyone who has a SIM/eSIM from them: https://x.com/TMobileHelp/status/1860715395851882683
Re: Starlink Direct to Cell
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly not sure why they would want to. The world is continually moving towards being centred around cities where it makes sense to simply rollout fibre. Especially with gigabit speeds being the new standard. And even in Australia they are starting to move remote areas onto fibre.
I think Starlink has caused rural fiber deployments to accelerate because a friend's property in rural Oregon just got fiber, but the challenge remains: after you get fiber to the corner of your 22 acre lot, how do you cover the rest of the 21 acres? With fiber and using wifi as your backhaul you have to get a chain a bunch of nodes to get Internet to each building/area you want wifi. Starlink (business) lets you jus…
Centurylink ran fiber down the nearest highway to my rural Oregon property a couple of months before Starlink became available. AFAIK the timing was more coincidence than anything, but you're entirely right about the logistics of fiber being non-trivial. As usual, last mile is the hardest part. Even with fiber at the highway, the only service Centurylink would offer us was 10Mbps DSL. I bet they would have tun fiver to my house for $$$$$, but Starlink is plenty fast and it would almost certainly take a decade or more to recoup the one-time costs of getting fiber installed all the way to my house.