Sieze his assets and throw him in prison
In China they probably would execute him.
Thanks for getting me aroused, stranger.
Elon Musk Is Charging Starlink Customers Gigantic Bogus Fees Because Its Network Is Being Crushed by [Musk’s] “High Demand” for more money
FTFY
Elon Musk Is Charging Starlink Customers Gigantic Bogus Fees Because Its Network Is Being Crushed by [Musk’s] “High Demand” for more
moneyketamineFTFTFY
Guess this Nazi welfare queen’s government handouts aren’t enough.
Company gives me a Starlink for deep remote work. I’m doing my part!
Violence against billionaires and trillionaire is not the answer. It is the question. And the answer IS YES.
Even my keyboard has trouble coping with the concept of a trillionaire.
Lol. Lmao, even.
Skimping out on backbone capacity is definitely a Musk move 😂
I hate everything about this. We’re ruining our astronomical observations and risking Kessler Syndrome so a trillionaire can price gouge rural internet subscribers because he wants to get the high score on net worth because he can’t get a high score on twitter likes (despite owning it) or any video game (despite having paid help). Who the hell told the United States that we have regulatory authority over our shared sky anyway?
Starlink is extremely competitive for rural customers, due in no small part to the USA’s extreme reluctance to make telecoms with monopolies actually reach people.
I’m not sure I would characterize a $1500 access surcharge as “extremely competitive” but I agree we should run fiber to rural areas.
If you’re referring to the dish purchase, they’re free these days. But even so, when your competitor is $200-500 upfront for a latent multi hop WISP topping out at 30 or 50mbps for $100 per month, a solid 300mbps for $130 and $1000 for a dish is cheap
No I mean the $1500 monthly demand surcharge that is the subject of the article you’re commenting under:
SpaceX is now charging some users so-called “demand surcharges” of up to $1,500
They aren’t price gouging rural internet subscribers it’s the opposite they get half priced subscriptions for as long as they keep them. It is the people who try to sign up that already live in a congested area that get fuck off prices. You can sign up and get a rural deal and then move to a congested area with fuckoff pricing. That is what I did inadvertently.
TIL about Kessler Syndrome. Thanks.
There’s an anime/manga series kinda about it. They’re a misfit space garbage disposal crew. Meant to prevent space collisions.
If you’re on a fedi service that allows you to follow individual accounts, like mastodon or piefed, you can follow my favorite astronomy professor in the fediverse who talks about this @sundogplanets@mastodon.social
Followed because awesome.
Me too. Also, I’m surprised Bezos doesn’t just do “space debris” cleanup. He’s not going to get into Musk’s space anytime soon.
It’s terrifying.
Nah hes running out of dupes. Private equity is very, very stupid but theyre catching up
Prior to and including IPO they have been on quite a marketing kick. Referral schemes, equipment rentals, discount plans for low usage etc. Seems like they’re trying hard to make the business make sense. I maintain that LEO (and WISP) ISPs should be limited to more extreme applications yet I see them all over the place in residential areas. Their technical achievements are impressive but if phone systems to remote areas were possible, then so should fibre optics.
Also this should be built by international organisations, not billionaires. A plague on Musk and a plague on Bezos.
they were, for months, literally giving the hardware away. no hardware cost. no recurring fees. just 20 bucks for shipping, then the whatever for the actual internet plan itself. a flat $80/mo i think the lowest cost one was. i have a few users on it that bought into that deal. i think it was just before the ipo where they started tacking-on an extra monthly fee.
Ma Bell had several decades to gain good ROI with POTS, while the rate of technology change today shrinks that outlook to just one to two decades. Plus the most profitable high income areas to be installing fiber now often have local laws requiring much more expensive underground installations so residents don’t have to see the ugly poles with wires hanging between them.
We’re still using dot-com fibre. There’s a long ROI.
Which snap a lot more regularly now with the broken weather.
I’m not in a remote area, just a geographically inconvenient one. Two blocks over they have fiber. Not in my neighborhood. I have been complaining about this for well over a decade.
Seems like every other 4x4 has one on the roof, every camper, people even mount them on their motorcycles.
I don’t think that’s really the issue, it’s the streaming that really does them in.
On one hand you have Netflix trying to cram 4k through and the neighbour is trying to have a phone call.
True, I don’t know if they already do it, but limiting media streams to 480p like cell providers do on some plans would probably lower congestion a lot. And maybe limiting large file transfers over a certain size to a lower priority and speed.
High-demand fees are just surge pricing for the internet.
If you use starlink, you deserve far worse. 5g is usually sufficient unless you’re out in the ocean or something. Either way it’s ruining the night sky, making launches more dangerous, destroying the ozone layer we tried so hard to repair, and supporting death and fascism.
Tell me you know nothing about rural living without telling you know nothing about rural living
Fortunately in my area in Australia we have wireless broadband. There are small towers installed and operated by a local company that provide a good service. The whole lot of towers interconnect using microwave too so can span a large area. In any case, fibre isn’t coming to my place probably ever.
5G in rural America is terrible. I can’t make a phone call in my house, let alone get an internet connection. I’m not even in a particularly remote area.
There are Starlink dishes everwhere you look here because it’s currently the only real option. It will probably be a while until they get some competition from Amazon.
Because they lobbied to shutdown running fiber to your community.
there is 100s of miles of fiber spools just sitting for years at a utility maintenance yard here. the provider that was doing the work to expand services just took the rest of the free money and split.
Maybe someday someone can explain why ISPs are not municipal services like water and sewage.
The local ISP has been promising fiber for over a decade. They waited until Starlink took most of their customers before they started putting it in.
destroying the ozone layer
This made me ask “wait, is that true” and apparently it is. Super, skin cancer for everyone. 🤦
And it’ll take ages to have an impact too.
Furthermore, we find that these reentry byproducts may take up to 30 years to settle from the top of the mesosphere into the stratospheric ozone layer. Upon reaching an altitude of about 40 km, aluminum oxides catalyze chlorine activation which promotes ozone depletion.
So the “reentry byproducts” from a satellite re-entering now, won’t start breaking down ozone until 2056, and by then there will be another 30 years’ worth of byproducts deposited in the upper atmosphere.
And since it’s a catalyst, it won’t even be consumed in the process like CFCs are.
Tldr aluminum from burning up satellites is a catalyst that breaks down ozone.
I wonder if wooden satellites would help. I don’t know how capable they are compared to normal ones, but it should reduce the amount of aluminium we launch into space.
Yes, there is a high demand for SpaceX to be less insolvent.
The corporate version of privatize the profits, socialize the costs. Get in bed with billionaires and you’re an enemy of humanity.
I’ve been having occasional Internet issues over the last few years and was thinking about having a backup ISP.
A lot of people in my town suggest Starlink… And well, I’d rather not have Internet at all!
However, I did recently find these guys: https://www.computers4people.org/shield I’m gonna give these guys a shot.
It’s probably not comparable, but no way in hell am I ever signing up for Starlink.
https://www.pcsforpeople.org/ is another organization with low-cost internet for low income households. they some have hardware, too. they’ve expanded a lot since their first location opened in minnesota in 1998. (note: i am not affiliated with them, i just occasionally refer people to them)
I think that makes a lot of sense, it would be nice if they clarified if you could BYO router. My guess is you can, as long as it has a sim slot, but can’t be too sure. Make sure T-Mobile coverage is good in your area first as well
That looks pretty good
More!