Comment on Starlink tries to block Virginia’s plan to bring fiber Internet to residents
cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 7 months ago
i hope elon dies and starlink goes bankrupt
I’d rather Starlink just be independent from Musk. There are people who just can not get a good Internet connection and rely on it, and other Satellite Internet companies are awful.
I hate Musk as much as the next person, but Starlink is brilliant and works well.
I don’t know how much Musk can be separated from Starlink. Not only because Starlink, as part of SpaceX, is privately held but also because the main reason they now have a superior service to offer is that they got fucktons of money from government customers, which is also tied to Musk’s action
A big part of Musk’s involvement with politics is because everything he does, from EVs to rockets to, now, big energy-guzzling datacenters for AI, needs a lot of government backing, if not in terms of direct contracts at least in terms of regulation and incentives.
Even his direct involvement with Trump wasn’t because he suddenly became a Nazi (he’s probably always been one, according to his own family) but in order to become even more entangled with government investments, even trying to control NASA directly.
And not only US governments. I remember Musk suddenly being everywhere in Europe pitching Starlink. Meloni’s government in Italy was grilled for allegedly agreeing on a big contract with Starlink.
Id rather all this space trash burn up and we just spend the money on providing internet via land.
It’s still a good thing for cell coverage in remote areas for hiking emergencies though. The few satellites that currently do that are stupidly annoying and expensive to use. You have to carry specialized equipment, and if you use Garmin, you pay a yearly fee for the privilege of signing up for the low tier plan, then a monthly fee for the service, and then pay by the text message after the first few. Starlink just added T-Mobile so if you have a newer phone and use T-Mobile you can skip all of that and message out in emergencies without all that nonsense. Hopefully more brands will be added soon, but I don’t know.
Not just for hiking emergencies.
Many of us in reasonably functioning democracies have had a few decades to forget that sometimes people want to destroy your civilian infrastructure. Far fewer of those people have the capability to disrupt a satellite grid.
Or we could just make satellite phone service more accessible? Without the need for thousands of pieces of space trash put into LEO? Nobody needs tiktok when they are climbing a mountain in a remote area.
Life is not safe. Adventure even less so. The loss of the night sky and the risk of Kessler syndrome is not outweighed by a slight convenience allowing influencers to stream video and hit social media while pretending to get away from it all.
but not in this order, the reverse would be so much more satisfying
thatcrow@ttrpg.network 7 months ago
I hope some hero gives him the UnitedHealth CEO treatment.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I hope he gets rectal cancer
nymnympseudonym@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Green hat good
Sig heil bad