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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday October 28 2020, @06:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the what-did-you-expect dept.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/10/spacex-starlink-public-beta-begins-its-99-a-month-plus-500-up-front/

SpaceX has begun sending email invitations to Starlink's public beta and will charge beta users $99 per month plus a one-time fee of $499 for the user terminal, mounting tripod, and router. The emails are being sent to people who previously registered interest in the service on the Starlink website. One person in Washington state who got the email posted it on Reddit. Another person who lives in Wisconsin got the Starlink public-beta invitation and passed the details along to Ars via email.

SpaceX is calling it the "Better Than Nothing" beta, perhaps partly because the Starlink satellite service will be most useful to people who cannot get cable or fiber broadband. But the email also says, "As you can tell from the title, we are trying to lower your initial expectations."

[...] SpaceX has said it will reach "near global coverage of the populated world by 2021."

[There are reports of additional expenses for taxes, ridgeline mount, and shipping. --martyb]

That's a bit higher than I'd hoped, but still doable. That's 50% more expensive than what I'm paying for point-to-point wireless for about 5X or better speed than what I am getting. Also, those are really nice latencies. My point-to-point wireless service has worse latency than that.


Original Submission

Related Stories

SpaceX Fights Opposition to Starlink, Pursues Funding From FCC's Lifeline Program 38 comments

SpaceX Starlink passes 10,000 users and fights opposition to FCC funding

Lobby groups for small ISPs are urging the Federal Communications Commission to investigate whether SpaceX can deliver on its broadband promises and to consider blocking the satellite provider's rural-broadband funding. Meanwhile, SpaceX says the Starlink beta is now serving high-speed broadband to 10,000 users.

[...] Electric co-ops that provide broadband raised concerns about both SpaceX's low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite technology and fixed-wireless services that deliver Internet access from towers on the ground to antennas on customers' homes. The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) and National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative (NRTC) submitted a white paper to the FCC claiming that the RDOF awards put "rural America's broadband hopes at risk."

The CEO of NRECA was blunt in his opposition to SpaceX's funding, as stated in a Bloomberg article today:

SpaceX's broadband-from-orbit "is a completely unproven technology," said Jim Matheson, chief executive officer of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, which has members that vied for the funding. "Why use that money for a science experiment?"

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday October 28 2020, @06:51AM (17 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 28 2020, @06:51AM (#1069775) Journal

    Because:

    Expect to see data speeds vary from 50Mbps to 150Mbps and latency from 20ms to 40ms over the next several months as we enhance the Starlink system. There will also be brief periods of no connectivity at all.

    But, no rush, I'll keep an eye on it.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday October 28 2020, @06:52AM (2 children)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 28 2020, @06:52AM (#1069776) Journal

      That 'splains

      SpaceX is calling it the "Better Than Nothing" beta, perhaps partly because the Starlink satellite service will be most useful to people who cannot get cable or fiber broadband.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Wednesday October 28 2020, @08:58AM (1 child)

        by anubi (2828) on Wednesday October 28 2020, @08:58AM (#1069813) Journal

        If Elon is talking straight talk, and AT&T is talking AT&T talk, it looks to me that price wise, it's almost a wash.

        By the time one faces all the dingbats in an AT&T agreement and contract, it's over $100 per month.

        I'd much rather pay Elon, if it means I don't have to mess with AT&T.

        --
        "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
        • (Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday October 28 2020, @09:25AM

          by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday October 28 2020, @09:25AM (#1069817) Journal

          The relevant competition for this "beta" is companies like HughesNet. Here's one horror story from the comments:

          HughesNet is our only available provider outside of getting Comcast to run a line for thousands. 30GB, 25/3 down/up (LOL!!) is $100/month, plus $450 equipment.

          Notice anything? [broadbandnow.com]

          The official FCC broadband definition is a minimum of 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload.

          Very shameless. Anyway, my guess is that SpaceX/Starlink will offer 2-3 tiers when it's out of beta, with an entry-level one in the $50-70/month range, and 1 Gbps for over $100/month.

          --
          [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday October 28 2020, @09:31AM (13 children)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday October 28 2020, @09:31AM (#1069819) Journal

      100 Mbps should probably be one of the tiers for the final service. That's more than enough for people who currently have to settle for 25 Mbps or worse. But SpaceX does want to offer 1 Gbps service.

      There is apparently no data cap.

      Big if true.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday October 28 2020, @10:03AM (9 children)

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 28 2020, @10:03AM (#1069823) Journal

        1Gbps is more likely for working remote.

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Wednesday October 28 2020, @04:26PM (8 children)

          by Immerman (3985) on Wednesday October 28 2020, @04:26PM (#1069954)

          What exactly are you doing remotely? Streaming 4K video only needs 25Mbps (according to Netflix at least)

          • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday October 28 2020, @04:56PM (7 children)

            by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 28 2020, @04:56PM (#1069977) Journal

            RDP-ing over VPN into the office, with 2x4k displays.

            --
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
            • (Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Wednesday October 28 2020, @05:35PM (6 children)

              by shrewdsheep (5215) on Wednesday October 28 2020, @05:35PM (#1069991)

              That's a huge waste. Mount your remote filesystem locally and use your local apps for editing. Ssh to compile/deploy. I do VNC occasionally but for serious work it is largely superfluous. Still 70/10 (which I have now) is much better than 30/3 (which I had a couple of years ago).

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2020, @06:22PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2020, @06:22PM (#1070016)

                Probably has to use some proprietary stuff that doesn't run on *nix, thus RDP.

              • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday October 28 2020, @11:06PM (4 children)

                by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 28 2020, @11:06PM (#1070142) Journal

                Mount your remote filesystem locally and use your local apps for editing.

                Thanks. It doesn't work when the codebase one needs to work on is 200GB+ in zillions of files which need to be sync-ed with the repo daily (with 1k-10k file changed) and then recompiled. A daily build is a 20-45min experience with an SSD for the storage, a clean build is a wee over 2 hours; I don't think a HDD will do, much less when the "file open" is subject to a 20ms lag over a network mount.

                --
                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
                • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday October 29 2020, @01:46AM (3 children)

                  by Immerman (3985) on Thursday October 29 2020, @01:46AM (#1070185)

                  It seems to me that you're conflating editing with compiling. I suppose the ease depends heavily on your environment, but you can almost certainly fire off a remote compile command while doing your editing locally.

                  In fact, assuming there's several other developers, with such a large codebase it might be worth considering using a shared compute cluster to do the compiling, rather than trying to make your piddling desktop CPU do the job. That could simultaneously dramatically speed up compile times, while simultaneously lowering the CPU requirements for a development station since it only has to deal with text editing.

                  Alternately, it's been a long while, but I want to say there's at least one distributed compiler that will let all the developers easily contribute their unused workstation cycles to the cluster (virtually any can do so if you dig into it), which can work wonderfully since a developer workstation usually has a pretty good CPU sitting idle 99.9% of the time while the developer is editing text.

                  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday October 29 2020, @03:56AM (2 children)

                    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 29 2020, @03:56AM (#1070232) Journal

                    It seems to me that you're conflating editing with compiling. I suppose the ease depends heavily on your environment, but you can almost certainly fire off a remote compile command while doing your editing locally.

                    Mate, I appreciate your intention to be helpful but, as you note, the needs are determined by heaps of factors related to the dev cycle. I used the "compilation" just as an example of problems that need answered, I assure you it's not the only one.

                    rather than trying to make your piddling desktop CPU do the job

                    As a guy in Quality Engineering, my piddling desktop (the one I remote in) has... let me see... 10 cores/20 threads CPU (i9 7900X), 64GB of RAM and 2xSSD 1TB each. Not sure how many cores/RAM/SSD the dev guys' piddling computers have, but my configuration was passed down to me when they upgraded about 2 years ago. Their upgraded machines were in the $8k-$10k each, displays excluded. Again, I assure you those hardware configs are technically justified and do produce business value.

                    I mean, OK, maybe I could appear to you as an ignoramus, but what are the chances that the hundreds who are maintaining and developing 200GB+ of source code plus their IT/devops support are all technical dummies?

                    --
                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
                    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday October 29 2020, @05:42AM (1 child)

                      by Immerman (3985) on Thursday October 29 2020, @05:42AM (#1070258)

                      Hey, you know your situation far better than I. And frankly, if the bandwidth is cheap enough, and the input lag doesn't annoy you, I can't think of any good reason not to just remote in. Especially if it puts a mighty beast beneath your fingers, and within whatever corporate network fortifications are in place. What's not to love?

                      Distributed compiling though, if it's supported by an acceptable compiler... that can be a mighty boon in the right situation. I'll refrain from speculating on the number of technical dummies in decision-making positions in larger organizations..., I get the impression there's a lot of institutional variation, and I'll wish you a lack of them. But doing things the way they've always been done on the other hand is an extremely human tendency.

                      I don't even remember for sure how I stumbled across distributed compilers - probably someone wanted to do a bunch of compiling on the underutilized university compute cluster I managed for a while. A rack full of dual-CPU "pizza boxes" that would make short work of almost anything our small school could throw at it. Personally I just dabbled a little with distributed compilers before moving on - for my typical project there's never been enough benefit to justify the setup. Quite possibly yours don't either - I suppose it depends how often a clean build happens, and how fast your normal incremental builds are.

                      But just as a concept - compiling is (usually) very amenable to parallelization when there's lots of files to build, and scales fairly linearly with the number of resources available. I'll say you have 60 developers to make the math easy: If everyone has a similar beast of a machine, sitting idle 99.9% of the time as they edit text, they could be clustered to share all that unused CPU time, and then when someone initiates a clean build, instead of taking 2 hours it takes 2 minutes. Or for a more moderate compile, instead of 5 minutes it takes 5 seconds. That's the sort of improvement that can make work flow a lot smoother, and save enough man-hours doing so to bend the ear of the bean counters.

                      Though come to think of it - I say "they could" - for all I actually know the trend was a flash in the pan and can today only be done with obsolete compilers and OSes. Or worse, it could work wonderfully, and severely hurt morale amongst those who really enjoy their compiling breaks.

                      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday October 29 2020, @06:42AM

                        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 29 2020, @06:42AM (#1070271) Journal

                        But just as a concept - compiling is (usually) very amenable to parallelization when there's lots of files to build

                        It depends a lot on what you have to build and what resources you have.

                        Look, for example, distributed builds are good when you are strapped of CPU power/RAM and trade IO/networking for it.

                        With lots of CPU and RAM, parallel builds are wasteful, you'll be bottlenecked hard by the IO. The best in this situation is to use single compilation units: you create a .c or .cpp files and #include in it a good chunk of individual .c/.cpp files and compile that one. The IO cost goes down dramatically (no more including the same headers again and again, not precompiled headers to take care of) and bringing a lot of code into a single compilation unit/context results in a much faster compilation (especially if you use cpp templates), creates a lot less output .o/.obj file so less files at the linking stage.
                        Of course we use automated code generation for those CU-s and of course we have ways to deal with "this code is not actively under work, chuck it in a single CU; go the traditional way for these others, I intend to work on them"

                        --
                        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 2) by EvilSS on Wednesday October 28 2020, @01:43PM (2 children)

        by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 28 2020, @01:43PM (#1069867)
        I currently pay $70/mo (taxes/fees not included) for 18/1 from AT&T. And that is my only option unless I want to give Spectrum $7K to run a line to my house. I'd love to give Starlink $99/mo for even 50mb/s.
        • (Score: 2) by datapharmer on Thursday October 29 2020, @08:41AM (1 child)

          by datapharmer (2702) on Thursday October 29 2020, @08:41AM (#1070285)

          I feel ya. $58/month for 3Mb/384k from AT&T. Cox cable wants $21,000 to connect me even though it runs down my street less than a mile from my house.

          • (Score: 2) by EvilSS on Thursday October 29 2020, @02:36PM

            by EvilSS (1456) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 29 2020, @02:36PM (#1070376)
            So I looked around a bit after this post and I found T-Mobile had expanded their home internet LTE service to my area this month. $50/mo tax included, unlimited (no throttling). Only downside is that you on a priority tier below phone users, so if you are on a congested tower it can be slow (slow being relative here, people are still getting like 5-10mb/s on congested towers vs 50-100 on uncongested towers). Router should arrive tomorrow.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2020, @09:30AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2020, @09:30AM (#1069818)

    I guess that means Russia won't need to block it since most Russian will be unable to fork 100 bucks every month, especially when land-based Internet costs at worst about 10.

    • (Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday October 28 2020, @03:44PM

      by legont (4179) on Wednesday October 28 2020, @03:44PM (#1069919)

      It's actually more like $7 for 50 mbps

      --
      "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 28 2020, @10:47AM (13 children)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday October 28 2020, @10:47AM (#1069825) Journal

    Once Starlink reaches primetime, it could mean a dramatic shift in how we live. If you can live in the middle of nowhere and hold down the same job you did while paying high prices in the city, why wouldn't you? After all, all the amenities of the city are now gone anyway and only the negatives remain. If your kids are attending school on zoom, why pay high taxes to support a school system that doesn't really serve them anymore anyway? Let them learn via Khan Academy or homeschool in the more traditional way. We are not allowed to leave our homes anymore, so what does a public transportation system matter?

    Some of that is happening already with the levels of broadband connectivity as is. With Starlink and perpetual lockdowns, a whole new wave of de-urbanization becomes possible.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday October 28 2020, @11:06AM (2 children)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday October 28 2020, @11:06AM (#1069828) Journal

      You have to think post-pandemic. There will be some degree of normalization, probably before Starlink becomes widespread. But the pandemic already kicked remote work, online grocery shopping, etc. several years into the future. Starlink will make it so that if you aren't forced to live near an employer, you can live damn near anywhere. It will still be more convenient for most people to live in major suburbs than Nowheresville, Texas, but you could ratchet up the difficulty level and live on a boat or island, potentially.

      Should the DoD’s Tech Professionals Work From Home—Permanently? [ieee.org]

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday October 28 2020, @09:23PM (1 child)

        by anubi (2828) on Wednesday October 28 2020, @09:23PM (#1070101) Journal

        Elon is making it much easier to move.

        When you have done your thing here, pack up your stuff and go. Anywhere. Internet and all.

        Another thing I love is that Starlink is immune to terrestrial problems... Earthquakes, floods, fires, hurricanes, civil unrest. If one keeps his terminal up, it should work much like our old amateur radios.

        I sure hope Elon offers a 12 volt option for power.

        --
        "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
        • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday October 29 2020, @05:12PM

          by Freeman (732) on Thursday October 29 2020, @05:12PM (#1070439) Journal

          One thing they're much more susceptible to is Solar Flares. Still, probably not a terribly big problem.

          --
          Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
    • (Score: 2) by etherscythe on Wednesday October 28 2020, @10:26PM

      by etherscythe (937) on Wednesday October 28 2020, @10:26PM (#1070125) Journal

      Depends on the MBAs (no pun intended). If they decide they can save a buck by cutting wages because you can permanently do your job anywhere, you bet they will - and cities will become ghost towns very quickly as wages plummet and property values fall and everyone that can leave, will. That's gonna play hell with delivery services like Fedex as all their route metrics get scrambled. But if they go back to "we need everyone in designated buildings" then maybe only retirement changes, assuming we don't all collectively work until the day we drop as seems more and more likely.

      Personally I'm intrigued to see a world in which people can come together and set up communities based around similar ideologies without the other issues that normally separate them and force them to mix in with other groups. There are of course serious ethical concerns, but on the flipside bringing enough people together to support a particular way of life could also be quite freeing to those who have minority interests or lifestyles.

      --
      "Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday October 29 2020, @01:55AM (8 children)

      by Immerman (3985) on Thursday October 29 2020, @01:55AM (#1070189)

      I think that depends heavily on who "we" is.

      I suspect that very few members of the general population choose to live in a city because of the internet speeds. Though I'd be willing to believe that number might be much higher amongst computer experts - as a class we seem to have much less interest in the many social and cultural aspects of city living, and possibly a greater chance than average to be nature lovers.

      • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday October 29 2020, @02:02AM (7 children)

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday October 29 2020, @02:02AM (#1070192) Journal

        I suspect that very few members of the general population choose to live in a city because of the internet speeds. Though I'd be willing to believe that number might be much higher amongst computer experts - as a class we seem to have much less interest in the many social and cultural aspects of city living, and possibly a greater chance than average to be nature lovers.

        I think many chose to live in the city because the jobs were better, and you had to live there to have them. Suburbs, of course, were the first wave of people using new infrastructure, the highways, to escape the negatives of the city while continuing to hold down those jobs. Peripherally, the amenities of the city, the museums, the culture, the restaurants, etc, made it more interesting and exciting to live there also. Now that cities have made it illegal to go outside or have forcibly closed down all the business and amenities, and people are working remotely, the advantages of city living have vanished and left the negatives. Internet connectivity, as it were, was not a reason why people lived in cities.

        --
        Washington DC delenda est.
        • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday October 29 2020, @02:47AM (6 children)

          by Immerman (3985) on Thursday October 29 2020, @02:47AM (#1070205)

          Sure, but the pandemic response will pass - either we develop a vaccine or a cure and end the pandemic, or we give up and accept that our chance of death is beginning to climb back to where it was before vaccines and broad-spectrum antibiotics were developed. Either way, our societies can't survive in lock-down forever.

          And frankly, I shudder to think of the environmental devastation that would be wreaked if people left cities en-masse for far less resource-efficient rural settings.

          • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday October 29 2020, @04:23PM (5 children)

            by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday October 29 2020, @04:23PM (#1070409) Journal

            Sure, but the pandemic response will pass

            It may, but the damage has been done. New York is on the verge of fiscal collapse. Nobody rides the subways or buses anymore, so the MTA's revenues have imploded. The education system is deeply screwed because of the on again, off again attendance. Small businesses have been obliterated. People are moving out of the city in droves; moving vans are on every block and have been for half a year. Property values in the suburbs and surrounding areas have spiked, while vacancies in the city have jumped and property values there have sunk. Then there are the unforced errors of defunding the police and enabling riots that are causing crime to spike to levels not seen since the 1980's crack epidemic. The city gets most of its revenue from property taxes, so it has less and less funds every day to maintain anything.

            All those factors create a negative feedback loop that keeps spiraling into the abyss even if they lift the lockdowns.

            the environmental devastation that would be wreaked if people left cities en-masse for far less resource-efficient rural settings.

            Not necessarily. We're not talking about felling swathes of the Amazon rainforest to make room for new towns. We're talking about existing towns that have already figured out transportation and utilities. Also, the distribution of goods throughout the country to the cities already does travel from warehouses and sites of production on rails and roads through those towns. If more people come to live closer to the points of origin, the trains and trucks will need to travel less to the cities so there could be a gain for the environment there.

            We might be looking at a future where there are a lot more smaller cities like Erie, PA or Grand Forks, ND.

            --
            Washington DC delenda est.
            • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday October 29 2020, @04:52PM (4 children)

              by Immerman (3985) on Thursday October 29 2020, @04:52PM (#1070426)

              Economies are badly shaken and collapse during a pandemic, it always happens, and we always rebuild afterwards. And we rebuild our economy in the same place, because that's where all the physical infrastructure already exists, and we can't afford to rebuild that when the economy is already in the gutter.

              > We're talking about existing towns that have already figured out transportation and utilities.

              Except you're not - you're talking about radically expanding those towns into major metropolitan areas to hold the huge influx of people (at least, if enough people move to make a big difference to the cities)

              Even without that though, as population density decreases, per-capita consumption increases. Yards are larger, and apartment buildings smaller, which means more surface area of roads and sidewalks per person, and more wiring and piping to bring utilities. More surface area per dwellings means more heating and cooling losses. Larger distances to do anything means a lot more fuel consumption. Etc,etc,etc.

              • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday October 29 2020, @06:46PM (3 children)

                by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday October 29 2020, @06:46PM (#1070483) Journal

                Economies are badly shaken and collapse during a pandemic, it always happens, and we always rebuild afterwards.

                Based on a sample size of one? Because this is the only such event in my lifetime, and you'd have to go back to the Spanish Flu to equal it, which would give you a sample size of two. I'm no statistician, but that seems a bit thin to me.

                And we rebuild our economy in the same place, because that's where all the physical infrastructure already exists

                Physical infrastructure has to be maintained, because mother nature is always tearing it down everywhere. In New York City they can't even plug all the leaks in the water supply, because there are simply too many; they play a game of fixing only the worst ones and hoping the rest don't get worse. Same thing in the subway: there are some places in the system where they have to replace the rails every day because they wear down that quickly. In other words, it's tough to keep an infrastructure designed for 15 million people going when only have 10 million people to pay for it (those aren't the actual numbers, BTW, but a rhetorical point).

                Except you're not - you're talking about radically expanding those towns into major metropolitan areas to hold the huge influx of people (at least, if enough people move to make a big difference to the cities)

                I am not talking about radically expanding those towns into major metropolitan areas. I am talking about having more Rochesters and Roanokes, towns you've heard of. Those places, too, can put up residential towers on land that was previously single-family. Sprawl doesn't have to be the outcome.

                But remember that we're not talking about suddenly having X number of extra people, we're talking about existing people redistributing themselves in a very big country. Their activities are not going to be new activities, but the same activities displaced somewhere else. So the energy footprint that a person has will travel with him.

                Also, this is not 1950. New technologies are available. Renewable energy, electric cars, and so on. We also have the will to use those new technologies.

                --
                Washington DC delenda est.
                • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday October 29 2020, @07:17PM (2 children)

                  by Immerman (3985) on Thursday October 29 2020, @07:17PM (#1070492)

                  History goes back a lot further than that - The Black Death, and Smallpox, were both fairly recent as well, and there's many, many more. These things have been sweeping through our societies for at least as long as civilization has existed. People keep rebuilding in the same places, because they have the existing infrastructure , and they're the best places for environmental (including transportation) reasons. About the only way a city gets abandoned is if the environment or technology dramatically changes so that it's no longer an economically appealing location.

                  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday October 29 2020, @09:06PM (1 child)

                    by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday October 29 2020, @09:06PM (#1070526) Journal

                    Yes, but I don't think we have the same quality of data about those economies to state that they "bounced right back." History rather compresses the "bounce back" period more than the people at the time experienced it.

                    As for city location, geography has been the main factor in that. But that changes, even within the arc of history. Take Ephesus, for example. It thrived in the Roman empire because it was a port. Today, the coastline is miles away and Ephesus is a minor Turkish city.

                    But that's why this turn of events is interesting, because it is a real decoupling of location from economic activity. They talked a lot about this at the dawn of the Web 20 years ago, but when established patterns of living and economic behavior persisted all the publications and news outlets lost interest in that kind of speculation.

                    Anyway, it seems an interesting development because in history and sociology urbanization, and de-urbanization a.k.a. the formation of suburbs, have been immense developments with huge implications for society.

                    --
                    Washington DC delenda est.
                    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday October 29 2020, @11:17PM

                      by Immerman (3985) on Thursday October 29 2020, @11:17PM (#1070561)

                      Hey now, nowhere did I claim that anybody has (or will) bounce right back. I think you might be channeling an argument with a particular kind of blowhard that thinks the pandemic isn't a big deal.

                      We'll rebuild, it's what we do. It'll probably take a while, but we'll rebuild where the existing buildings and infrastructure, because we'll be too broke to build new ones. It's not like those satellite towns have enough empty houses standing around to support a large exodus from the city.

                      City property values may tank, and take businesses and investors down with them, but that creates opportunities for those people buying at fire-sale prices. It may well get grim for a while, but we always rebuild.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday October 28 2020, @12:23PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday October 28 2020, @12:23PM (#1069834) Journal
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Zinnia Zirconium on Wednesday October 28 2020, @01:08PM (6 children)

    by Zinnia Zirconium (11163) on Wednesday October 28 2020, @01:08PM (#1069852) Homepage Journal

    Price point don't impress me because the cost in unit bandwidth per unit money is the same as LTE. Right now I can buy $50 of equipment that will get me 15 Mbps and the monthly charge would be $10 should I choose to pay it. Why should I buy $500 of equipment for 150 Mbps and pay $100 a month instead. Same cost as LTE scaled up by a factor of 10 exactly is fukken meh.

    Gone is the totally fukken empty promise of less than $80 a month for better than crappy service. It's the same cost as LTE. LTE fits in my pocket. Starlink ain't gonna fit in my pocket unless I start dressing in a clown costume.

    Looks like musk is just another billionaire bastard.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday October 28 2020, @01:23PM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday October 28 2020, @01:23PM (#1069856) Journal

      "Better Than Nothing" beta

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2020, @03:45PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2020, @03:45PM (#1069920)

      Starlink appears to be targeted at the large parts of the world that don't already have a solution for high bandwidth internet access. If this offering seems like low bandwidth at a high price compared to what you can already get, then you are not part of the target market. I am not part of the target market either, but I suspect that a lot of people are.

      • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday October 28 2020, @09:16PM

        by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Wednesday October 28 2020, @09:16PM (#1070098)

        That sounds right to me. I live in a fairly densely populated suburb, so I have 100 mbps fibre and it is great. However, one of my colleagues lives a rural area and doesn't have fibre available to him, so he sounds like the ideal customer for this.

    • (Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday October 28 2020, @03:46PM (2 children)

      by legont (4179) on Wednesday October 28 2020, @03:46PM (#1069921)

      Yeah, exactly. What is he smoking this time?

      BTW, I am registered but did not get the offer so far.

      --
      "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
  • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday October 28 2020, @08:11PM (1 child)

    by fustakrakich (6150) on Wednesday October 28 2020, @08:11PM (#1070070) Journal

    That is one big-ass off switch, given the order

    --
    La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 30 2020, @12:34AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 30 2020, @12:34AM (#1070608)

      Good thing Musk has never threatened to take his ball and go home!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2020, @11:58PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2020, @11:58PM (#1070168)

    That is likely to have some interesting political outcomes. Those antennas are small enough to hide from the thought police. Wonder what this will do to China. Wait... We are like them now, they probably won't notice.

    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday October 29 2020, @02:08AM

      by Immerman (3985) on Thursday October 29 2020, @02:08AM (#1070195)

      At least until the thought police start employing drones to trace your broadcast back to its source

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