Technology

Billionaires will kill us all, while millionaires scream and yell. Thousandaires defend them both, while we all suffer in hell.

Over promise and under deliver, the musk way. Fucking clown ass Nazi piece of shit. I know there’s not a lot of viable alternatives, but if you’re using a Nazi service, I lack sympathy when the Nazi raises your prices.

So basically:

His companies are hilariously insolvent, so he rolls them all together and does the biggest IPO of all time to raise money.

But he still needs more money.

So then he tries to do a corporate bond issuance... doesn't go super duper well.

So he still needs more money.

Welp, ok then, jack up fees, whatever, not very original, but does at least kind of work.

Any takers as to whether or not he'll still need more money?

If you guess correctly, you get a free Neuralink installed in your head that you can send OTA bluetooth firmware overrides to nearby devices with your brain!

Or well, maybe it works... maybes its the opposite of that. Whatever.

... But you can recharge them with your solar roof tiles! And then get in your Tesla Roadster! And then take a Starship ICBM flight to Hong Kong or Moscow or Buenos Aires or Rome! And then take the hyperloop to Antarctica!

I remember when starlink first became available here and had better speed than you could get with terrestrial services. 5 minutes research showed network bandwidth would be a problem once they had significant adoption. Lo and behold...

Investors should have learned by now that Musks endeavors are 100% ADHD cycle projects; hyper focus, obsess, launch, start to lose interest, hop on the the next, abandoning previous project, instead of building on the success.

This is why satelite internet is a dead end. The latency and bandwidth are fundamental limitations of physics which are incredibly expensive to scale up compare to cable and cell towers.

Even if we have a complete satellite roll out we'd still have to go back to cell towers for better latency. So why even entertain this detour if not for war machines - one niche where satellites are actually better.

To be fair, the network being crushed by high demand is extremely unsurprising. Cellular networks have always had this problem in dense areas, where it’s no way you're reaching the advertised speed. This is mainly due to the available channels being shared by everyone in a relatively large area, connected to the same cell. Which is mitigated somewhat by setting up more cells with shorter range for a higher cell density in cities.

How could a satellite based network ever scale? Where you have what, a handful available cells to cover an entire state?

America will do anything except lay some fucking cable to provide internet to the ruroids.

LOL...from the beginning of this grift, experts said Starlink was not scalable.

From what I see, 99% of the business community thinks all graphs linearly extrapolate.

Spoiler alert: AI learning is not scaling either.

How could someone who knows all about computers and networking not predict the logistics problems for such projects? /s

I saw my first billboard advertising Starlink in Billings, MT today. They have avoided advertising in the past.

"I can complain about Starlink raising their prices, but it's the only genuine option we have," former Nebraska state senator and Republican Julie Slama told the Washington Post last month. "Once they have rural customers on their service with no meaningful alternatives, they're free to raise prices at will."

Yes, that is what everyone has been warning about for years and why we want the communication monopolies torn down... Fucking leopards running loose out here eating faces and they still just kinda shrug and go "wish there was an alternative to letting all the leopards run free eating our faces".

And that was supposed to be the backbone of the space based data center

The whole concept is rotten right from the start.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk maintains an extremely close relationship with Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr.

Under Carr's leadership, Musk's rocket company has effectively been given carte blanche in its efforts to roll out its orbital Starlink broadband service to more Americans, a glaring conflict of interest that could have profound implications for society.

That's despite concerns over thousands or even millions of satellites cluttering our planet's already extremely busy orbit and the environmentally damaging rocket launches that send them up.

And the space-based network is already starting to experience some major strains — as some experts have long predicted.

"How can Europe compete with that?" I ask myself more and more often (also AI bubble/data centers). Hopefully in the long term.

Guy is being a little too trigger happy with this bait and switch but it should still surprise absolutely no one. Starlink with it‘s thousands of satellites, requiring hundreds of rocket launches is ridiculously expensive to operate and can‘t hope to compete with fiber price wise.

The country that invented the internet... has the worst internet infrastructure in the developed world. Worse than some developing countries too. Astonishing.

Since the article doesnt make it clear

This is for new or re-activating customers in a congested area.

This isnt a random usage fee, this is for areas they claim are too busy, so you gotta pay if you want to gain access.

Its like when you call a contractor and they quote you a stupid high number. Its often because they're too busy, but if you'll pay the stupid high number theyll do it.

There was no world where SpaceX could support unlimited customers in a cell region.

“I can complain about Starlink raising their prices, but it’s the only genuine option we have,” former Nebraska state senator and Republican Julie Slama told the Washington Post last month. “Once they have rural customers on their service with no meaningful alternatives, they’re free to raise prices at will.”

Should we pull up the record and see who voted to allow that to happen in Nebraska while on the subject?

I have a neighbor who has access to 1gb cable and 1gb fiber from two ISP's. Both have high data caps. Instead he is rocking the starlink and I can't for the life of me figure out how he thinks that shit is somehow better than a hard link.

If a V1 satellite only has 24 Gbit/s in total capacity on its links to the base station, and a V2 mini satellite only 96 Gbit/s, then it's no wonder really.

Fine by me. All his customers are a bunch of suckers

We have terrestrial radio and cables. What is the point of this complex space-based trash?

I mean, high demand shouldn't justify surprise pricing

Poor Elon, down to his last Trillion

I just can't imagine having such excessive wealth and not saying "eh, whatever" when someone tells me I'm losing money on some internet fees.

You fucker, you could make the world at least a tiny bit better for billions of people at virtually no expense to you, but you just keep playing your stupid fucking rich manchildren games with your billionaire parasite buddies.

Keep grinding bro, maybe this way you'll get used to the feeling of having your bones crushed in the grinder.

This is like those people who bought Meta glasses and then acted surprised when they got screwed. Did you really not expect something like this from Musk?

You should only be a Starlink customer if you have no other feasible choice.