this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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I know a lot of people have issues with Elon musk. But starlink really has been an incredible game changer for people in rural areas or places where it's not practical to get cell or internet service. My parents live on the side of a mountain in Colorado where there's no cell service and it would have been thousands of dollars to run an internet line. Starlink has completely changed the game for their connection to the outside world and with us. I'm sure this will be even better for them.
Bad people can do good things. And good people can do bad things.
The technology and drive to get this rate of growth is amazing.
To an even more direct point. Musk bought Starlink just like he bought SpaceX and Tesla. The only things he's had a direct hand is the original X which thankfully got bought up by Ebay, and Twitter/X which he's been actively running into the ground.
A few articles for reference.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/spacex-employees-denounce-ceo-musk-distraction-letter-2022-06-16/
https://www.theverge.com/23815634/tesla-elon-musk-origin-founder-twitter-land-of-the-giants
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/19/elon-musk-management-style-twitter-tesla-spacex
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/05/elon-musk-doesnt-know-what-hes-doing-says-former-twitter-executive
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/17/business/spacex-workers-elon-musk.html
yes, he bought it, now is the question how he will ruin it. I wouldn't want him anywhere near my network traffic, Elmo is the type of guy to run Musk-in-the-middle for shits and giggles, even without any other possible incentives.
And before any tls or e2e discussion starts - it's still possible to learn quite a lot if you are sitting on the channel level if you don't run vpn on your gateway constantly.
None of these articles are about his contribution to the technical part of the companies, except Twitter. Maybe I misunderstood what point you were trying to make.
How many thousands of dollars?
It's $600 to get the equipment set up, and $110 a month thereafter. It's the only viable solution for some, but I have to wonder if ISP's are truly to blame for 95% of our rural internet issues.
Maybe instead of 4,000 space launches, we should hold ISP's accountable and provide better solutions on the ground that don't fuck up the environment and ruin our view of the stars for generations to come.
Like thousands upon thousands of dollars to run cable because the infrastructure doesn't exist at all. And yes, ISPs are absolutely to blame for rural internet issues. They don't see it as a valuable investment so they don't want to expand to those areas because it's such a small community and instead put the burden on the community. Even though the government subsidizes the shit out of them for them to do specifically stuff like this. They don't have enough rules they have to follow.
And sure, I'm sure we'll be able to hold ISPs responsible reasonably well overnight and that will fix rural people's problems overnight. Starlink is really good for a lot of people. I'm not saying it's good for the environment or space. But it helps people who basically have no way to connect with the greater world connect.
First, Musk didn't do this, the engineers at SpaceX did. Second, I fully acknowledge that it makes internet cheaper and gives more people access, and that's a great thing. What's not so great is the impact to astronomy from the ground. And unfortunately, this issue is only going to get worse as more subscribers and competitors join in. I really wish there was a solution, but even with SpaceX painting the bottom black the satellites are still visible.
I'm also nowhere near smart enough to come up with a solution here, so I suppose this is more of a rant than anything.