this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2025
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[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 2 points 42 minutes ago

They’re welcome to say that, as long as their ruler doesn’t enter the political or policy arena and have the moral depravity to act despite a conflict of interest. As long as corporations don’t have undue influence on politics from lobbying or donations.

We don’t have to listen.

Our representatives should be representing us. ….. alright alright you can stop laughing now

[–] W3dd1e@lemmy.zip 6 points 55 minutes ago

It shouldn’t be all or nothing. It should be diversified.

Yeah, there are rural locations where Starlink makes sense but also there are a lot of urban places that it would never work in.

[–] SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 20 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

One day he's gonna get assassinated and it will be a global holiday

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 6 points 1 hour ago

You'd be instantly banned on reddit for this comment lol

[–] IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

ding dong the witch is dead

[–] sugarfoot00@lemmy.ca 29 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Publicly funded fibre can be provider agnostic. Starlink can't. Unless Musk is arguing for the nationalization of Starlink, which frankly I could get behind.

[–] alekwithak@lemmy.world 17 points 2 hours ago

We paid for it, it should be nationalized. But they only ever socialize their losses, the profits are private.

[–] PumpkinSkink@lemmy.world 4 points 1 hour ago

Yes. Lets tie our expansion of desperately needed internet access in rural America to massively carbon emitting rocket launches. Thats definitely not gonna back fire on us.

[–] MehBlah@lemmy.world 6 points 2 hours ago

Musk is still hitting the special K.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 5 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Low orbit satellites will never replace fiber because physics of latency, bandwidth and error correction.

As far as things go today well never need less fiber. Even if we cover the sky with satellites eventually we'd need to upgrade to fiber because its literally impossible to beat. Except for scifi tech like quantum entanglement networks which might not even be possible or practical and wouldn't need the satelites anyway.

As an infrastructure bet it makes absolutely zero sense except for covering rare niches like war zones or oceans.

[–] alekwithak@lemmy.world 10 points 2 hours ago

To quote Dan Harmon out of context: "If you ask a toaster, "What's the most important thing in the world?" it's going to tell you, "Bread." And if you ask a toaster its opinion of bread, it's going to tell you, "It's not toasted enough."

[–] weew@lemmy.ca 12 points 3 hours ago (3 children)

On one hand, Musk.

On the other hand... Telecos.

You can either give billions more to the world's richest asshole, or you can give billions to companies that already received that money last time and did absolutely fuckall with it.

Lose-lose

[–] billwashere@lemmy.world 8 points 2 hours ago

I mean there is a third option: municipal fiber

But then the gub’ment is your ISP but at least it’s not making billionaires money.

I’d suggest the best case scenario to me would be a fourth option like a community run co-op of fiber to the premises and have it be grant funded. But who am I kidding, that’s almost to socialist for rural America like where I live.

[–] tehn00bi@lemmy.world 5 points 3 hours ago

Not really. Most of the rural plans in the US are run by utilities companies that are local.

[–] CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

Third option: municipal fibre

[–] billwashere@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

I should really read before I post… :)

Thats illegal most placss.

So twice as cool as well as functionally superior.

[–] abbiistabbii@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 3 hours ago

"Humans should give me chicken" says Cat.

[–] ubergeek@lemmy.today 43 points 6 hours ago (16 children)

Except StarLink cannot possibly provide the same bandwidth, latency, and throughput a fiber connection can. Because of physics.

I can either share my 10G symmetrical connection with nobody, or with 200 others.

And, Fiber costs me $70 a month. Starlink, with worse performance, costs 4x more.

[–] utopiah@lemmy.world 4 points 2 hours ago

Because of physics.

Pfff, physics, pesky detail! Clearly you are not a true visionary like Musk! /s

[–] billwashere@lemmy.world 3 points 2 hours ago

In principle I agree with you, but as a network guy, somewhere, between you and the server you are connected to, the bandwidth is shared. The only question is just where and how much bandwidth (well network throughput) there is to share. I work for a large university and our main datacenter has 10GbE and 25/100GbE connections between all the local machines. But we only have about a 3-5gb connection out to the rest of the world.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’d 100% rather have a symmetrical fiber connection to the ISP than something shared like radio or DOCSIS. I used to live in a neighborhood where everyone had Spectrum and about 5-6 PM the speed would plummet because cable internet is essentially just fancy thinnet all over again. Yes I’m old since I used to set up thinnet :)

PS: I would kill for $70 fiber where I am now. Used to have it but we moved to the sticks and I miss it terribly.

[–] iridebikes@lemmy.world 15 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

It's not secure either. The next world war will involve efforts to sabotage satellites.

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 6 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

That's the point. Musk wants control over the entire internet.

If all the other internet infrastructure was abandoned, he would be the most powerful person in history. Want to regulate him afterwards? He could just shut down the internet in your region until you accept his terms.

[–] iridebikes@lemmy.world 3 points 2 hours ago

He has already meddled in the Ukraine war doing things like this, too. He turned off Starlink during an offensive Ukrainian mission. He claims he had to because civilian systems aren't allowed to be used for a foreign incursion into Russia and that he'd face consequences. Which is a complete lie.

[–] interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 hours ago

That's good for Starlink and all other ISPs, intuitively, the less internet people have, the more they will pay for more, simple supply and demand !

The best financial move for SpaceX and Starlink would be to have a few "unfortunate accidents" where tesla crash into telephone poles which happen to also hold critical fiber junctions.

Now that is profit driven innovation !

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[–] Darleys_Brew@lemmy.ml 4 points 3 hours ago

lol. Of course it does.

[–] PlasmaTrout@lemmy.wtf 17 points 5 hours ago

I've been WFH for at least 10 years and live in rural area. Starlink was like 150-200$ a month for an unpredictable 5-150mbps and did meh. When I finally got fiber it was sub 100$ a month for 2gbps stable. Not a hard decision :)

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