Technology

I don't particularly like Elon, but I think a lot of people are forgetting what Starlink has done for rural areas, and areas that don't have highspeed internet. I live in the Southern US, and the only other options at my address are AT&T DSL or other satellite companies. We don't have 5G towers in the area so I can't go that route, most satellite companies have extremely low data caps, Hughesnet has a cap of 200Gbs for $150, with horrible connection, and AT&T DSL makes a 200MB download take 30-45 minutes at the fastest. My town has a population of 10k, and we're still dealing with those being the only choices. If you go 30 minutes over to the next town they have Satellite, and that's it. ISPs don't care to fix the problem unless there's another company taking customers from them with better service. Starlink has opened up a lot of the internet, and the possibility to work from home for a lot of people.

You know, on one hand, I do want to like. I have been looking into some cool space stuff more recently, and it seems like spaceX and starlink have been doing pretty well, relative to musk's other business ventures, like X (no relation to spaceX, of course, which is great branding), and maybe tesla, which I kind of hate on the basis that they suck. But on the other hand, I wonder about how much of that is due to musk's involvement, or if it's just a factor of right place right time. I don't think venture capital capture and attention capture from the balding manlet CEO of tesla, channeled towards reusable rockets, I don't think any of that hurt, it was probably an advantage to those organizations, even if only like, by a small amount. But then, I dunno how much his mismanagement of these projects, and of most of his business ventures, have ended up hamstringing them in the long run, with unreasonable demands of his employees, and over-promising, and higher turnover rates than would probably be necessary. You know, I'm posting this from starlink internet, because I live in a rural place. Would that have happened without his idiocy? I'm inclined to say probably, but I'm also inclined to thank that guy that invented fertilizer, maybe even if he also invented mustard gas or whatever that story was. Which isn't really to say that musk invented anything, or what have you.

Basically what I'm saying, is that I think it is probably a good thing, if you have gotten to a point where you can look at someone who's "fucked up" history, and you can spin that into a good thing, even not by their intention, or even if it's removed a causal step or two, it's a good thing if you can spin their shit into gold. Probably. I dunno, it's reassuring to me somehow, among the sea of situations that are the exact opposite where some guy's cool idea gets taken by a soulless venture capital firm and drained like a vampire for investor hype before it's discarded as useless vaporware. Mistakes into miracles.

While it’s always entertaining to read nonsense from haters as much as drama between haters and fanbois …..

Can’t y’all step back and look at the actual situation? US Government is spending our tax money to improve internet access for rural areas (good), but given the monopolistic behavior of telecoms, it will be going to one or more large companies (bad). The goal is improved access to the internet. The choice is between a turd and a shit sandwich.

Don’t anthropomorphize a corp: Starlink is one of the corps who can serve this goal. On their merit, do you really think they’re any worse than other candidates? Do you really prefer all that money disappearing into the mass of established internet providers, just like previous hundreds of billions, with nothing to show for it? Personally I see these companies with established technology but long history of not delivering, whereas Starlink has new technology not yet proven at scale, but really seems a lot more promising to serve the goal. Yes, I want grandpa Jones in North Haverville to have internet access and I really don’t care who runs the corp that provides it