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

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

#271

Post by Retric »

CorrectHorseBat wrote: post #244
Retric wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way to add one satellite over NYC on average is to also add several satellites over the ocean and other low density parts of the earth. If you want low latency individual satellites must be in LEO which means they spend most of their time over water and low density bits of land. Which gets back to my original point where increasing the maximum density inherently reduces the average utilization of each satell…

Sure, but my point was that there's a maximum density you can get which won't be enough for NYC or even a much less dense city.

The current network can handle 1 home per square km on average but averages over a very large area. So ~2,000 as many satellites and you can handle NYC’s population.

It’s actually less than you expect because you can make use of satellites a hundred miles out to the sea, over the Hudson River, and even suburbs. And that’s before considering how few people would pick Starlink when they can use cheap fiber.

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

#272

Post by ripjaygn »

h0l0cube wrote: post #233
ripjaygn wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a lifelong liberal and won't vote Democrat after seeing how SpaceX and Tesla are being treated by the liberal media, including the publishing of outright fake news by so called reputable outlets. I don't support Trump or Putin or dictators in general. If I vote Republican at some point it'd be an anti-Democrat vote.

Democrats aren’t the liberal media, and the current Democratic controlled government also happen to be subsidizing both SpaceX and Tesla

SpaceX isn't subsidized and the govt tried really really hard to exclude Tesla from EV subsidies, and reversed at the last minute.

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

#273

Post by ripjaygn »

subsection1h wrote: post #234
qsdf38100 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Astroturfing is going strong in here. You made the above statement in response to one user, and then a different user replied who has a 9-month-old account and 1/3 of his comments include "Tesla": https://hn.algolia.com/?type=comment&query=author:ripjaygn+T... You called it. The astroturfing is off the charts! And the user who replied to your comment pulled the "As a black man" routine just like the user you replie…

Tesla doesn't even have a PR team because Musk is cheap and Musk totally pays me(a highly paid DevOps/SRE btw) to astroturf by offering me 7 figures! Please get a grip on reality.

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

#274

Post by ripjaygn »

qsdf38100 wrote: post #263
subsection1h wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Astroturfing is going strong in here. You made the above statement in response to one user, and then a different user replied who has a 9-month-old account and 1/3 of his comments include "Tesla": https://hn.algolia.com/?type=comment&query=author:ripjaygn+T... You called it. The astroturfing is off the charts! And the user who replied to your comment pulled the "As a black man" routine just like the user you replie…

Yes, it’s sad, but I guess it’s expected. Elon bought Twitter to have a propaganda platform, use it for himself, and sell disinformation-as-a-service. Why wouldn’t he pay for astroturfing on popular websites as well? A website like HN where you can find a lot of tech people and investors. It’s easy, it’s cheap, it’s mean. I see no reason he wouldn’t.

I'm not cheap, I am a highly paid SRE. If you're going accuse me of astroturfing please don't call me cheap.

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

#275

Post by Retric »

Sparyjerry wrote: post #212
Retric wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have essentially unlimited satellites the issue is the percentage of time each one spends over high density areas. Design for NYC density and 99% of satellites would be redundant at any given moment. The solution for increasing density is dropping costs so it’s viable for satellites to be idle 95% of the time. At least as a first approximation, there’s some tricks with how you setup orbits after the basic net…

Musk himself has said Starlink is not designed for cities and fiber is a much better option there. To supply say NYC, you would need also be supplying bandwidth to the entire world underneath the orbit that the satellites. That is a lot of wasted satellite time as it flies around the earth with zero users most of the time just for the brief moment while users spike to the scale of a city like NYC.

Yea, fiber + 5G + Starlink is more efficient than any of those technologies alone.

It’s always worth remembering that efficiency and technical limitations are different things. We could absolutely blanket the US in 5G towers but the cost is vastly higher than the benefit.

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

#276

Post by CorrectHorseBat »

Retric wrote: post #271
CorrectHorseBat wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but my point was that there's a maximum density you can get which won't be enough for NYC or even a much less dense city.

The current network can handle 1 home per square km on average but averages over a very large area. So ~2,000 as many satellites and you can handle NYC’s population. It’s actually less than you expect because you can make use of satellites a hundred miles out to the sea, over the Hudson River, and even suburbs. And that’s before considering how few people would pick Starlink when they can use cheap fiber.

Well no, that's my whole point. Because you're sharing the medium you'll get interference if multiple satellites service the same area.

>And that’s before considering how few people would pick Starlink when they can use cheap fiber.

Obviously we're talking about how dense an area Startlink can service on its own.

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

#277

Post by ivewonyoung »

sneak wrote: post #207
ivewonyoung wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They tried not servicing Crimea due to an unwillingness to get involved in the war, and the DoD quickly made them toe the geopolitical line I am confused, it's illegal for Starlink to prove access to Russia and Russian occupied areas like Crimea because of US sanctions. So essentially the opposite of what you're claiming.

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 people say it because it makes it sound like Musk turned off Starlink in order to scupper the Ukrainian attack on the Russian Navy, which is not true. And others keep repeating it because they don't know better.

> The DoD overruled them, either via requirements for Starshield, or by just laying down the law

The law is that SpaceX cannot violate US sanctions. If the US Gov later exempted SpaceX from sanctions and then instructed them to turn on Starlink in Crimea, how is that "laying down the law"? The initial request didn't come from the US gov, it came from Ukraine.

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

#278

Post by Retric »

CorrectHorseBat wrote: post #276
Retric wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current network can handle 1 home per square km on average but averages over a very large area. So ~2,000 as many satellites and you can handle NYC’s population. It’s actually less than you expect because you can make use of satellites a hundred miles out to the sea, over the Hudson River, and even suburbs. And that’s before considering how few people would pick Starlink when they can use cheap fiber.

Well no, that's my whole point. Because you're sharing the medium you'll get interference if multiple satellites service the same area. >And that’s before considering how few people would pick Starlink when they can use cheap fiber. Obviously we're talking about how dense an area Startlink can service on its own.

> Because you're sharing the medium you'll get interference if multiple satellites service the same area

I’m going to simplify because you seem to misunderstand what’s going on.

Your eyes allow you to see a clear image of your surroundings because photons come from even slightly different angles aren’t interfering with each other. Starlink uses a phased array antenna to achieve a similar effect where satellites in different locations broadcasting on the same frequency can be clearly distinguished by two base stations physically next to each other. And similarly two different satellites can receive clear signals when two Starlink antennas are broadcasting when physically next to each other at the same instant.

There’s physical limits and the phased array antenna in use are much worse than theoretically possible. But, the technology they are currently using really does scale vastly beyond what’s economical viable.

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

#279

Post by fennecfoxy »

RowanH wrote: post #109
jagtstronaut wrote: post #17

Despite the hate on the promo the tech they offer is still pretty cool. Only way I knew my in-laws were safe near Asheville was because one of their neighbors had starlink and a generator. Took a week for them to get power and cell phone service back and there is no way to get to them without a helicopter so if it wasn't for the product we would have just learned that they were alright.

In New Zealand we're very much natural disaster prone. I run a SaaS working out of home - we wired the house for generator backup and have a starlink unit that sits in a box exactly for this reason, even if the proverbial hits the fan for a week I can still keep on top of the business. Every couple of months the geny gets sparked up and everything tested. For a very small investment it's very comforting to know we've…

As a Kiwi I wouldn't say we're prone to natural disasters per se. Certainly not on a yearly basis.

Though that said, Mt. Taranaki is meant to do the big boom soonish. That'll be interesting.

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

#280

Post by FredPret »

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.

The US is kicking butt because it has 330 million people, most with a very high human development index (HDI), all together in one country with an extremely effective and pro-business culture.

All the rest flows out of this.

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