Submitted 3 weeks ago by Tea@programming.dev to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.propublica.org/article/elon-musk-starlink-trump-white-house-spacex-microsoft
The tech billionaire and Trump adviser “donated” Starlink service to the White House. The move resembles a previous maneuver by Microsoft, which used “free” trials to lock in costly upgrades across the federal government.
remember the time that Leon Skum turned starlink off for Ukraine just before a Russian attack?
he can never again be trusted. especially when it comes to safety and security
That‘s how silicon valley has been operating for longer than I live. You bet that‘s what‘s happening as has been happened a million times.
the difference is microsoft’s products actually worked.
In a different time, and a different age, somewhere around year 2000. The Phantom Menace, The Matrix, Peter Jackson abusing LOTR fans. PlayStation before it got boring, Web before it got stupid, Sun Microsystems before it got dead, construction and aerospace and software design alike being done by actually competent people.
Microsoft did the barely necessary to be taken seriously.
Mostly. Office 365 has pretty frequent outages.
Not really though. Starlinkn doesn’t scale up well. And it only makes sense in niche circumstances. And it is vulnerable. You could easily imagine a future president just taking it over for national safety reasons.
Elonia has proven such concerns already with actions.
The difference here is that felon charges the government a fuckload to use Starlink already. Trial was years ago.
There’s a very good premium episode of This Machine Kills from a week+ ago which touches on this topic. It’s is a conversation with Katie Wells and totally worth a listen.
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“There’s nothing more expensive than a free gift.” - Michel de Montaigne
caffinatedone@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
After all of the sketchy contracts that musk seems to be getting under this regime, the next administration should nationalize SpaceX. With their corrupt self dealing, perhaps give him a dollar or so for it.
whodrankarnoldpalmer@startrek.website 3 weeks ago
Americans don’t have HALF the balls
Viri4thus@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
100% this.
The well regulated militia in the most armed country in the world is just the typical exceptionalism story. Talk is cheap but when it comes to act, americans are just little bitches. Hollywood can whitewash the history later.
los_chill@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
What do you want me to do? I’m fucking out there protesting. Shit I’ll be at another rally today. I wish things were different but I’m not a coward and I’m doing what I can. I’m sorry.
shplane@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Okay, if this was happening in your country, what would you do that would actually stop fascism?
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
So there were some military contracts that were just awarded.
54 missions total:
SpaceX: 28 missions, $5.9 B = $210.7 M per launch
ULA: 19 missions, $5.4 B = $284 M per launch
BO: 7 missions, $2.4 B = $342.9 M per launch
SpaceX did get the most money, but they were also the cheapest provider due to their reusable 1st stages.
Just with those 9 extra launches over ULA SpaceX saves the US government and taxpayers 668 million dollars.
If SpaceX didn’t exist, it would have been almost 8 billion more but actually worse since the other providers can’t supply that much and wouldn’t have had as much competitive incentive.
Doesn’t seem so self dealing to me, they were able to bid lower and win more, and saved, (I’m assuming you given your rage) a shit load of money.