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We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

arstechnica.com

41–50 of 122 posts

Re: We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

#41

The article doesn't even mention AWS, which I think is the obvious implication being overlooked here. AWS has Government and defense contracts, with DoD notably. This enables secure private communication outside of the internet across data centers (of which there are a lot) and of course, to any point on the Earth. The idea that this is for "underserved communities" is probably a sly nod to battlefield logistics.

They will undoubtedly sell some aspect of Kuiper through AWS. They already have IP addresses and DNS in the AWS product list, and they have all kinds of data transport services.

I don’t know if the government implication is as big as you think, as the US government has been doing secure satellite communications for decades and has already given SpaceX the contract for Starshield. So undoubtedly Kuiper would love a piece of the action but there is already competition and Kuiper is a bit late to the game.

Re: We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

#42
post #4

So more satellites to block the view for astronomers.

Progress tends to have downsides. Highways and rail tracks destroy the environment and make areas hard to cross, but I think most people would acknowledge that on balance, having them them is a good thing. In this case, the obvious solution would be to provide a small number of orbital observatories to the astronomy community for free or with heavily subsidized pricing.

What progress? I gain nothing from this. I have symmetrical cheap reliable fiber to my house.

Re: We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

#43

The article doesn't even mention AWS, which I think is the obvious implication being overlooked here. AWS has Government and defense contracts, with DoD notably. This enables secure private communication outside of the internet across data centers (of which there are a lot) and of course, to any point on the Earth. The idea that this is for "underserved communities" is probably a sly nod to battlefield logistics.

Quick note that post-Snowden: no it doesn't. There's no such thing as "secure private communication" from magic wires.

Re: We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

#44

The article doesn't even mention AWS, which I think is the obvious implication being overlooked here. AWS has Government and defense contracts, with DoD notably. This enables secure private communication outside of the internet across data centers (of which there are a lot) and of course, to any point on the Earth. The idea that this is for "underserved communities" is probably a sly nod to battlefield logistics.

Quick note that post-Snowden: no it doesn't. There's no such thing as "secure private communication" from magic wires.

End to end encryption has not been broken.

Re: We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Progress tends to have downsides. Highways and rail tracks destroy the environment and make areas hard to cross, but I think most people would acknowledge that on balance, having them them is a good thing. In this case, the obvious solution would be to provide a small number of orbital observatories to the astronomy community for free or with heavily subsidized pricing.

What progress? I gain nothing from this. I have symmetrical cheap reliable fiber to my house.

I don't, so there's that.

Re: We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

#46
post #36

> Say a couple perpetually quarrels about who's going to do the dishes. To prevent further squabbles they decide to split the chores on weekly, alternating basis. > > Everything works well, until one of the spouses falls ill. The dishes pile up in the kitchen sink, but the other spouse does not feel responsible for the mess. It’s not their turn. And yes, there's nobody to blame. And this is where accountability sinks…

[deleted]

Re: We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Progress tends to have downsides. Highways and rail tracks destroy the environment and make areas hard to cross, but I think most people would acknowledge that on balance, having them them is a good thing. In this case, the obvious solution would be to provide a small number of orbital observatories to the astronomy community for free or with heavily subsidized pricing.

What progress? I gain nothing from this. I have symmetrical cheap reliable fiber to my house.

You call that progress? I gain next to nothing from cheap reliable fiber being available at your house either.

Re: We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

#49

The article doesn't even mention AWS, which I think is the obvious implication being overlooked here. AWS has Government and defense contracts, with DoD notably. This enables secure private communication outside of the internet across data centers (of which there are a lot) and of course, to any point on the Earth. The idea that this is for "underserved communities" is probably a sly nod to battlefield logistics.

> This enables secure private communication outside of the internet across data centers

How so? I'd imagine the datacenter terminal side downlink to be much more easily tappable than fiberoptics.

There are advantages in latency and potentially availability, but even there I would imagine fiber to win in an adversarial active jamming scenario.

Re: We know a little more about Amazon's satellites

#50
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quick note that post-Snowden: no it doesn't. There's no such thing as "secure private communication" from magic wires.

End to end encryption has not been broken.

Yes, which makes the point of dedicated connectivity moot from a data security point of view.

Metadata security and availability are different concerns.

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