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Starlink Is a Big Deal

sneak.berlin

261–270 of 365 posts

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#261
post #259

Comparing speed to ADSL is ridiculous. Slow ground internet is not a technology issue, it is a political issue. Even in russia in most major cities everyone (!) have optical (!) fiber directly (!) in their apartment (!). If you want you can get 10GB in your average home. In USA in SF in Bernal Heights i can get RF link with 30mbits at best for ~5x price.

[deleted]

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#262

> "Hundreds of cities and dozens of countries, fine for living but previously entirely unsuitable for a place of business, will blink from red to green on the map once Starlink goes live." this reads like a marketing piece rather than actual analysis. Throughput of a single satellite is 20Gbps. The finished constellation if I recall correctly is supposed to be about 12k satellites. So about ~250.000Gbps. So assuming…

I may be biased as the CTO of a company that connects rural, small subsaharan African farmers with financing, but the role out of cell infrastructure has definitely changed the world in a good chunk of rural Kenya at least.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#263

> * For reference, my last flat in Berlin (the capital of the largest economy in the EU), on the ground on a main street in the city center, was serviced with approximately 14MBps ADSL, and this was the fastest offering available from any vendor.* That seems really low to me. I was under the impression that Europe had generally better internet access than in the US. Comcast delivers much better speeds than that even…

It has. I have 100mb/s in Berlin. Seems that his street is not connected well, or he lives too far away from the distribution node, there is also 1gb/s cable in some streets.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#264
post #248
post #165

> Billions of people, blocked from accessing the Internet due to lack of infrastructure or local greed or fraud related to same, are presently kept from participating in the global knowledge economy. Starlink will remedy this, to some extent. Isn't covering the world in a blanket of satellites from a single company the epitome of a global Monopoly? I'm worried about such a future controlled by SpaceX...

> Isn't covering the world in a blanket of satellites from a single company the epitome of a global Monopoly? shivers . My gripe with this comment is the subtle neo-colonial undertone it has too. "The world needs saving from their inefficient local authorities! It's their fault other countries don't enjoy the spoils of modernity. Luckily this charitable Westerner will bring you under their efficient global empire...…

> neo-colonial undertone it has too

This argument makes absolutely no sense at all. How is that colonialism? I would like a further explanation. Because corporation government?

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those choices are all present, and the site works fine with location disabled. I test that.

OK, I navigate to the site in Firefox 60.3.0esr (64-bit) in Debian, and allow everything in NoScript. Then I see this: > See Starlink > Click to search for viewing times at your location. So I click, and see a popup: > Will you allow james.darpinian.com to access your location? So I click on "Allow Location Access". Then I see "Loading", with a GIF. But nothing ever loads. Checking about:config, I see that NoScript l…

> Firefox 60

It's the old browser, not anything to do with your privacy settings. Sorry, when you decide to use an old and uncommon browser version the price you pay is that sites aren't going to be testing compatibility with it.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, I navigate to the site in Firefox 60.3.0esr (64-bit) in Debian, and allow everything in NoScript. Then I see this: > See Starlink > Click to search for viewing times at your location. So I click, and see a popup: > Will you allow james.darpinian.com to access your location? So I click on "Allow Location Access". Then I see "Loading", with a GIF. But nothing ever loads. Checking about:config, I see that NoScript l…

> Firefox 60 It's the old browser, not anything to do with your privacy settings. Sorry, when you decide to use an old and uncommon browser version the price you pay is that sites aren't going to be testing compatibility with it.

Come on, that's not much more than a year old.

> Firefox ESR

> October 23, 2018

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#267
post #245
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really can't fathom the reasoning behind this much passion about astronomy tied to this much hatred of putting things in space.

I agree with the sentiment of the parent comment. Not because I have a huge passion for astronomy, but because I think we're prioritizing things in a wrong way. We're prioritizing yet another billionare's networking business over the capacity to study our night's sky. Much like other types of pollution, this is something that could stick around for hundreds of years, even after all its utility is gone. Cell towers, l…

Firstly, the satellites fall out of orbit automatically within 5 years even if they break because they're in LEO. Secondly, again because they're in LEO they are invisible for most of the night while they are in Earth's shadow, not affecting stargazing or astronomy in the slightest during that time. It's only an hour or so near dawn and dusk where the satellites are visible.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies like Viasat are already offering that. A couple of years ago, they were talking about how they wanted to offer free internet to all passangers (with enough bandwidth that everyone could stream HD movies, thanks to the new satellite they launched in 2017). I'm not sure how the rollout is going, though, or if the airlines want to do this. I guess the airlines can make a fortune overcharging passengers for int…

I'm a viasat customer. Most days, github.com doesn't exist for me. Anything using SSL is going to fail 30% of the time anyway, and 50%+ of the time after they restrict our bandwidth for the month. Even if they could provide better service, I wouldn't hold my breath in expectation of it.

When I was at Viasat, there was a difference between what was provided to consumers (Exede) and what they were providing to airlines with their new satellite. The new one has much higher bandwidth than their older one. I’m not sure if the new satellites will service consumer internet too as I left the company before Viasat-2 became fully operational.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies like Viasat are already offering that. A couple of years ago, they were talking about how they wanted to offer free internet to all passangers (with enough bandwidth that everyone could stream HD movies, thanks to the new satellite they launched in 2017). I'm not sure how the rollout is going, though, or if the airlines want to do this. I guess the airlines can make a fortune overcharging passengers for int…

> A couple of years ago, they were talking about how they wanted to offer free internet to all passangers (with enough bandwidth that everyone could stream HD movies, thanks to the new satellite they launched in 2017). I'm not sure how the rollout is going, though, or if the airlines want to do this. I guess the airlines can make a fortune overcharging passengers for internet. The only thing that makes sense to me ri…

Yes, that’s actually what I worked on when I worked for them a few years back (specifically I worked on using satellite internet to update the onboard media libraries), but on launch of their new satellite they were pushing for simply allowing streaming.

Re: Starlink Is a Big Deal

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firefox 60 It's the old browser, not anything to do with your privacy settings. Sorry, when you decide to use an old and uncommon browser version the price you pay is that sites aren't going to be testing compatibility with it.

Come on, that's not much more than a year old. > Firefox ESR > October 23, 2018

Firefox 60 is from May 2018. It's 12 major versions behind. You may not like it, but it's a fact that web browsers change quickly these days. Mozilla may support ESR for a year but I don't. This is a side project and my test matrix is already too large; I don't have time to test uncommon versions of each browser.
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