As someone who spends a lot of time in the outdoors, I have to disagree with you. I’m very excited about how this will simplify logistics, and make getting weather etc much easier.
The skies are already polluted with Starlink satellites and there’s even more coming. I agree that is does solve some situations, but it’s being done for profit, not for undeveloped areas. Sticking more shit in our skies for money is really sad, I am surprised there’s not more international regulations for this kind of satellite spam.
Of course cell towers are an eye sore. Though they are more necessary than starlink, often hidden by landscape or on top of buildings anyway. It’s not the “gotcha” comparison you think it is.
Perhaps necessary was the wrong word, though I don’t know if starlink supports the same bands the towers already do for 2G, 3G, 4G etc. They don’t obstruct our skies, so that’s much preferable.
Starlink sats are only visible to the naked eye when they’ve just launched, once in orbit they’re only a problem for ground based optical astronomy, and even then it doesn’t seem to be as much of a problem as everyone makes out.
I get that you probably hate Musk, but a lot of the points you’re making are just nonsense.
If there were more third-world people here they’d probably agree with you as well. Last I checked there’s like one or two cables going into the entire continent of Africa.
It’s actually a really good idea, with the main exception being the impact on astronomy. That Musk happens to be the guy behind this first network is just an unfortunate coincidence.
As a person who lives in the third world I absolutely do not want the internet to only be controlled by American corporations from space and would much rather fund proper fiber optics and connections.
I still don’t want the Americans to be controlling literally anything I use or interact with. They will harvest that data to execute military operations against leftists where I live. No fucking thanks, keep your Starlink.
Ah. Yeah, I guess that’s true. It is an American thing. Would you feel better if it was European or Chinese?
Wire infrastructure is great, but it’s just damn expensive, and manufacturing+laying it can be very specialised labour. Even here in Canada not everyone has it in rural areas. Meanwhile, small satellite swarms pass over everywhere by force of geometry, and are actually still pretty fast internet.
Not really, but of that list only China hasn’t directly colonized the country I live or send storm troopers into the forest to murder people in the past decade. I would like the taxes we pay here to go towards developing ourselves, we can pay to educate networking engineers and subsidize the work ourselves and hook into the internet as a peer instead of as a subscriber. Third world countries aren’t poor because we have no money, we’re poor because we’re trapped in bad loan agreements, have lopsided international investment and bad interior planning which prefers plantation cash crops over food security.
As someone who spends a lot of time in the outdoors, I have to disagree with you. I’m very excited about how this will simplify logistics, and make getting weather etc much easier.
The skies are already polluted with Starlink satellites and there’s even more coming. I agree that is does solve some situations, but it’s being done for profit, not for undeveloped areas. Sticking more shit in our skies for money is really sad, I am surprised there’s not more international regulations for this kind of satellite spam.
This is such a Lemmy comment, there’s nothing evil about providing a service for a price.
Not on its own. Polluting the skies for profit is the problem. Why the cherry picking though?
Do you also think cell towers are “polluting the landscape”?
Of course cell towers are an eye sore. Though they are more necessary than starlink, often hidden by landscape or on top of buildings anyway. It’s not the “gotcha” comparison you think it is.
Why are they more necessary? They both do the same job.
Perhaps necessary was the wrong word, though I don’t know if starlink supports the same bands the towers already do for 2G, 3G, 4G etc. They don’t obstruct our skies, so that’s much preferable.
Starlink sats are only visible to the naked eye when they’ve just launched, once in orbit they’re only a problem for ground based optical astronomy, and even then it doesn’t seem to be as much of a problem as everyone makes out.
I get that you probably hate Musk, but a lot of the points you’re making are just nonsense.
What’s evil is what that incentivizes. It’s not solving problems but building profit.
I’ve never had to do anything to get the weather. It just arrives and does its thing.
If there were more third-world people here they’d probably agree with you as well. Last I checked there’s like one or two cables going into the entire continent of Africa.
It’s actually a really good idea, with the main exception being the impact on astronomy. That Musk happens to be the guy behind this first network is just an unfortunate coincidence.
As a person who lives in the third world I absolutely do not want the internet to only be controlled by American corporations from space and would much rather fund proper fiber optics and connections.
Starlink is probably a stopgap measure for areas that still have to build up the physical infrastructure for the real solution.
It’s more of a solution for having internet available just about anywhere. Probably good for various emergency/rescue scenarios.
I still don’t want the Americans to be controlling literally anything I use or interact with. They will harvest that data to execute military operations against leftists where I live. No fucking thanks, keep your Starlink.
Sad American upvote for that. I can’t imagine how this country must look to people around the world.
Ah. Yeah, I guess that’s true. It is an American thing. Would you feel better if it was European or Chinese?
Wire infrastructure is great, but it’s just damn expensive, and manufacturing+laying it can be very specialised labour. Even here in Canada not everyone has it in rural areas. Meanwhile, small satellite swarms pass over everywhere by force of geometry, and are actually still pretty fast internet.
Not really, but of that list only China hasn’t directly colonized the country I live or send storm troopers into the forest to murder people in the past decade. I would like the taxes we pay here to go towards developing ourselves, we can pay to educate networking engineers and subsidize the work ourselves and hook into the internet as a peer instead of as a subscriber. Third world countries aren’t poor because we have no money, we’re poor because we’re trapped in bad loan agreements, have lopsided international investment and bad interior planning which prefers plantation cash crops over food security.
Yeah, development is a “sticky wicket”. I didn’t mean to speak on your behalf when you’re there to speak for yourself, so sorry about that.