281–290 of 299 posts
This sounded like a great idea to me at first. But, Each balloon provides coverage to a 40km diameter area. That's a lot of balloons to cover rural Africa. It would help a great deal if the balloons could be made to stay in precise locations, like geostationary satellites. I thought maybe they had solved that problem (which would be amazing). But, I guess not. They said in the video that the balloons would follow the…
"I love those who yearn for the impossible." -Goethe I wish other large companies showed such ambition. Telecoms like AT&T can't even be bothered to roll out the network upgrades they promised in the early 2000's.
Most large companies don't have the financial flexibility that Google's near-monopoly on search offers. Lots of ten-billion per year in revenue companies are eking out 5% margins in extremely competitive fields and can't afford to be distracted by ambitious projects. AT&T is locked in tight competition with Verizon in a very capital-intensive market, and can't afford to divert capital to blue-sky projects. Back when…
For most organizations the task of running these sort of experiments will easily come at a chicken feed cost.
However the real problem is really amidst all red tape, most middle management can't tolerate smart engineers. It threatens them, they feel insecure that smart people will ultimately replace them.
There fore they make all attempts to stop anything big from ever happening. Running daily affairs as usual is OK. Its in their interest to keep rewards, motivation and level of work such that their positions are safe.
There's a lot that I don't like about Google, but I do like that they're fucking insane.
Is it really a good idea to use Google even on the lowest layer, meaning the network itself, for the transportation of your data? In light of the surveillance state that the US has become and the collaboration of government agencies with the tech giants, I say: Support the small guys!
This sounded like a great idea to me at first. But, Each balloon provides coverage to a 40km diameter area. That's a lot of balloons to cover rural Africa. It would help a great deal if the balloons could be made to stay in precise locations, like geostationary satellites. I thought maybe they had solved that problem (which would be amazing). But, I guess not. They said in the video that the balloons would follow the…
I think you're missing something - you don't need to be connected to the internet constantly in order for the internet to be very valuable to you. If you have access once a week for 30 minutes, that's a lot more than never. That's enough to send emails and keep in touch with the outside world in new ways.
Trying to do an "Energy Budget" with my low-power research background. Please help with the balloon angle. .1 - 1W Balloon height adjustments .1 - .5W Flight tracking, control and management .5 - 2W RF power and conversions (balloon-to-ground) .5 - 2W RF power and conversions (balloon-to-baloon) 1 - 2W Packet routing, processing and baseband processing Essential missing insight: how to they lower/rise the balloons an…
Edit: there are more details here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5887330 Apparently they circle the Earth every 14 days.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google is a business. They're only going to spend big money on a project if they expect to make a profit. Even if it might be possible in theory to provide coverage to the whole world via balloons, you'd have to be willing to lose a lot of money. From the standpoint of philanthropy, you would most likely get more benefit per dollar in other ways. For instance, the Gates Foundation has spent a lot in Africa on fightin…
> Google is a business. They're only going to spend big money on a project if they expect to make a profit. People say this as if this was a law of physics. It's not. The company buildings will not spontaneously combust if they try to do something that is not calculated to make optimal short-term profit. They prove, time and again, that they care about awesome/worldchanging more than they care about the money. As som…
On another site, which was also on HN (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/introducing-project-l...), they are more forthcoming about the scale of the challenge and the likelihood of success. I like the tone of that page much more than this one.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I share the same concerns - what about the batteries and other products that aren't as expensive as the routers?
(from http://www.google.com/loon/faq/#pilot ) Q: WHAT STEPS IS PROJECT LOON TAKING TO BE ENVIRONMENTALLY RESPONSIBLE? A: We are taking several steps to ensure Project Loon does not negatively impact the environment: - We’re working to guide all balloons to collection points upon descent, so we can reuse, recycle, or dispose of the parts responsibly - When balloons do not make it to one of these collection points, we…
Pulling them out of the deep ocean would likely be infeasible. They might be able to make them float, though, and get them when they wash up on a beach somewhere.
Edit: there are some answers here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5887330 They do have batteries.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it really a good idea to use Google even on the lowest layer, meaning the network itself, for the transportation of your data? In light of the surveillance state that the US has become and the collaboration of government agencies with the tech giants, I say: Support the small guys!
What makes you think the _small_ guys will protect your data _better_?
This sounded like a great idea to me at first. But, Each balloon provides coverage to a 40km diameter area. That's a lot of balloons to cover rural Africa. It would help a great deal if the balloons could be made to stay in precise locations, like geostationary satellites. I thought maybe they had solved that problem (which would be amazing). But, I guess not. They said in the video that the balloons would follow the…
It's good to see the hard information, because this site is all marketing.