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

Incorrect.

They were denied because they had not yet provided coverage in the area (years before they were required to, under the contract).

As FCC's Commissioner Brendan Carr wrote:

“Instead of applying the traditional FCC standard to the record evidence, which would have compelled the agency to confirm Starlink’s $885 million award, the FCC denied it on the grounds that Starlink is not providing high-speed Internet service to all of those locations today.”

“What? FCC law does not require Starlink to provide high-speed Internet service to even a single location today. As noted above, the first FCC milestone does not kick in until the end of 2025. Indeed, the FCC did not require—and has never required—any other award winner to show that it met its service obligation years ahead of time.”

I think the people in Tennessee, North Carolina, Maui, East Palestine, and every other botched emergency the last 5+ years would have been pretty happy to quibble about a 'paltry' 640 Million.

Also it's not as if this is the -only- money spent on these endeavors. This is one agency in one year, doing something which was unprecedented until they could manage it via Covid 'emergency' measures.

You can stick your fingers in your ears if you want, but people are going to be pissed and have every right to be -- just like you have the right to handwave it away if you so choose.

I just said ICE off the cuff, but it could just as easily have been Border Patrol or some other agency. At the end of the day, I doubt if you asked many people "Do you want your countries emergency management fund setup so they blow their budget flying in people from other countries and putting them in hotels that you can no longer utilize, more cash benefits than disaster victims that grew up paying taxes here - or would you prefer that money be spent on national emergencies?"

I think you would have a hard time finding people who say "oh please, spend that on hotels and shelters and migrant flights! Their wants come before my family and friends needs."

And before you give me some spiel about how that's a 'false dichotomy', I'll remind you that FEMA is currently saying they can't afford another storm and are being raked through the coals in how badly they are handling the current one. So it is not a hypothetical situation - they literally said that American citizens are going to have to donate their personal already-been-taxed money to make it through this.

That's 640 million that could have not been taken on TOP of the taxes from Americans, because of course people are going to pony up to save their communities.

On top of taking at least 1/4-1/3 of every paycheck, they are TELLING us that we have to fund our own rescue.

Honest question - what number IS worth quibbling about in your mind? What dollar value legitimizes scrutinizing government spending? I didn't know there was a threshold we had to meet for the concerns to be valid. By that logic if an agencies budget grows large enough, there is simply no valid criticism that can be leveled, and the budget must always go up just like the stocks!

I haven't even heard of a single account of someone successfully getting the $750 'immediate need' funded, but I have seen dozens of videos of people crying or angry that they got denied immediately without any reason. Admittedly that's selection bias, but I actively looked for people who did.

I also have yet to see a single person who things this is being handled well... and I see a lot of active duty service/reserve members very angry they can't help their friends and family while they are standby to go die for another middle east war we have no business in.

Things I learned from this thread: 1) Elon Musk bad, despite using what resources he has to help -- any help is an automatic bait and switch to monopolize the internet (lol) 2) Government spending criticism irrelevant, you have to meet a hazy threshold for the concern to be worth 'quibbling about' 3) HN Users are largely in a very bubbled social circle (online and off), and are going to be shocked when reality penetrates that bubble.

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

If I fully decked my roof out I can generate a good 20kWp

I'm assuming OP isn't actually serving out of home (starlink won't help with it's CG-Nat), so it's not like they're running 5kW of servers. 10kWh a day seems perfectly reasonable amount to keep going.

Given just running a generator it going to eat 20 litres a day on lowest load, over 3 weeks that's 400 litres you'd need to store.

With a battery setup even if you had to charge from a generator you'd be able to run it more efficiently for a shorter period.

So having spend 10 minutes I reckon the answer is "yes, OP should certainly get a solar/battery system set up"

One wonders how we ran electricity out everywhere.

Running a fibre is about the same cost as running a power cable.