• BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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    3 days ago

    American taxpayers paid for both Starlink and Space X. Overpaid, actually, that’s why he’s the richest man in the world. None of his businesses are profitable, he just skims hundreds of billions off the enormous government grants he gets.

    Since we overpaid for that tech, we should just confiscate it from him. He can be thankful that he doesn’t go to prison for misappropriating government funds.

    He can keep Tesla. It’ll be bankrupt in 2 years anyway.

  • blind3rdeye@aussie.zone
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    3 days ago

    Company says that everyone should give them money and stop using competing products.

    Obvious thing to say in the land of self-interest.

  • bitwolf@sh.itjust.works
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    How about no

    How about we take down every starlink satellite so NASA can operate unabated, and our telescopes aren’t interfered with.

  • Ascrod@midwest.social
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    3 days ago

    “Oligarch mouthpiece demands diverting of major public funds to oligarchs instead”

    Story of America, really.

  • thatkomputerkat@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    No fucking thanks. Gigabit+ fiber > Nazi-ass satellite internet that doesn’t have even remotely near the needed bandwidth for actual dense population centers.

  • uhdeuidheuidhed@thelemmy.club
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    3 days ago

    Remember how Elon Musk conned Vegas out of millions with the hyperloop.

    Satellite internet is not the future; it’s cell internet.

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        We already have physical lines.

        Businesses and governments aren’t going to invest in digging and laying down more cables to give people in rural America access to fiber. They’re already reluctant to do it for major cities.

        • darkangelazuarl@lemmy.world
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          They actually have invested multiple times. Problem is the companies they give the money to just pocket it and don’t update their infrastructure. Give this money to the local community or coop owned fiber operators. Stop giving money to these huge corps that don’t need it and fund the small coop and community run fiber operators.

        • CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world
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          Fibre deployment is getting cheaper and easier. Both in terms of cost of materials and in the equipment and labour skills.

          It’s also much more secure from interference and disruption.

          For populated areas, there’s zero justification to rollout wireless over fibre lines. And most major cities already have fibre in most, or many, areas. And the thing with fibre is that the physical lines can be used to deploy faster speeds with upgraded endpoints.

          Tech bros would have you think physical connections aren’t a good choice anymore, because laying down fibre isn’t sexy enough for that VC money.

    • Soup@lemmy.world
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      Conned them and then Nashville, I think it is, is also paying him for it. True stupid, the US isn’t a country of learners, it seems.

  • skozzii@lemmy.ca
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    4 days ago

    Going from the most secure, hard wired formats to a con man’s satellites would be a fatal error. Any sort of military conflict and the network is all down, atleast broadband keeps secure networks intact.

    • gramie@lemmy.ca
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      3 days ago

      Just have a look at what’s going on in ukraine. Once they started using drones, the drone were attacked through their wireless connections. Now they trail fiber optic cables for control. What does that say about the relative reliability and security?

  • nonentity@sh.itjust.works
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    Wireless data transmission should only ever be used for nomadic, temporary, and/or sacrificial links.

    They’re useful for quick deployment, but are intrinsically brittle and terrible for resiliency and efficiency.

    The longer the dependence on them for a given use case, the less defensible arguments in support of them become.

    I’m all for the use of satellite delivery of internet services, but only when it’s used in conjunction with a broader roll out of hardwired infrastructure, at which point it can reasonably be relegated to serving as a secondary, backup diverse path.

    • Jason2357@lemmy.ca
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      3 days ago

      Cory Doctorow described it as anti-futuristic tech. Where fiber networks get better, faster, and cheaper the denser they get, wireless satellite will get slower and less reliable the more people share that spectrum.

      • bigbabybilly@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Which is why I’m here and not there. It’s the internet: I hope nobody posts their hot takes! Reddit needs to lighten up. Or even better, fuck off.

      • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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        3 days ago

        Some of us were already banned for such comments, but now we are here being bloodthirsty dickheads. I want to put Musks head in a vice and tighten it till the two plates are dry.

        • muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works
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          3 days ago

          That’s just ridiculous. The suffering he has inflicted on the rest of the world will be felt for a very long time. Crushing his head would get him out of those consequences.

          Why not something more drawn out?

          I say we fit him with an explosive collar and any time his asset valuation exceeds, let’s say 350% of the federal poverty guideline, its starts screaming an alarm. He would then have 2 hours to reduce his asset valuation or it explodes.

          I would say he should to live as a poor person in the US forever but honestly, the idea of him balancing a bank account like the rest of us is more entertaining.

      • 🍉 Albert 🍉@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        i like the alternative saying

        Some make the world better by their passing, others make the world better by their passing.

        it’s vague and passive enough that you have plausible deniability, but the meaning is clear. plus I like the poetry of it.

    • buttnugget@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      We should always celebrate whenever male supremacists meet their demise. People who use the term “misandry” unironically, for example.

  • sugarfoot00@lemmy.ca
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    4 days ago

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

      • CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Technically, S0aceX should be nationalized by the US based on the volume of money they’ve received in contacts.

    • Pennomi@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Starlink has much better latency than most satellites, but still 10 to 50 times as much as fiber.

        • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
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          Uh, how often are you using the Internet to connect to a computer in your home town? Maybe 5% of the time?

          I’ve never used Starlink, but with a basic understanding of geography and optics, I’m going to bet that in most scenarios the latency difference between Starlink and fiber is negligible, sometimes even being faster on Starlink, depending on the situation.

          That said, I’m not suggesting Starlink is a realistic replacement for fiber, just that latency isn’t the big issue. (It has other serious issues)

            • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
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              Ok, so actual question, How useful are CDN endpoints these days with https everywhere? Because most encrypted content is unique to a single web user, caching isn’t super useful. Also you can’t cache live content like video calls or online games. I’d imagine the percentage of cacheable content is actually fairly low these days. But like I said, I don’t actually know the answer to this, i’d be curious to hear your take.

              Edit: it’s weird to get down votes for a question.

                • The_Decryptor@aussie.zone
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                  Browsers partition the cache by “origin” now though, so while it can cache HTTPS content, it can’t effectively cache shared content (It’ll store multiple independent copies).

                  So Youtube still works fine, but Google Fonts is pointless now.

                  Edit: Oh yeah, and any form of shared JavaScript/CSS/etc. CDN is now also useless and should be avoided, but that’s always been the case.

              • randompasta@lemmy.today
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                4 days ago

                HTTPS / TLS has little to do with it. Don’t think of the endpoint as a cache between you and the origin. The DNS name given to the endpoint is the origin from your browser’s perspective. How content gets cached on the backend is irrelevant to the browser. Live video that someone else in your area is also watching is cacheable. Images to load a page, very cacheable. The personal stuff is mostly HTML specific to you but that’s quite small.

          • Anivia@feddit.org
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            4 days ago

            I live near DE-CIX and have fiber. So a decent chunk of web services I use is available with a latency of under 5ms. And everything else hosted in a European datacenter with under 20ms.

            So almost all of my internet traffic has a lower latency than starlink has under ideal conditions

        • ubergeek@lemmy.today
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          On fiber, while I don’t play that game, I’ve never seen a ping longer than 10-13msecs.

          • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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            The point is, unless you’re playing some hyper competitive game where a 30ms difference in reaction time is noticeable (this is less than 1 frame in a fighting game, for example) Starlink works perfectly well. Lower numbers are better, but for games you only need to compare that number to human reaction times (150-200ms) to see that both are small values less than the reaction time of any person.

            Previous satellite Internet using satellites in geosynchronous orbit had 1500ms latency, for comparison.

            • Anivia@feddit.org
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              where a 30ms difference in reaction time is noticeable (this is less than 1 frame in a fighting game, for example)

              You have some pretty bad understanding of how netcode works if you think a 30ms ping in an online multi-player game means your game or input is delayed by 30ms. It’s a lot more complicated than that, and especially in games with bad netcode you will absolutely notice a difference between 10ms or 30ms ping

              • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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                Oh, please explain the complexity to me like I’m a system administrator with only 25 years of experience. I didn’t realize that computers could connect to each other over a network until 3 days ago, imagine my surprise.

                You could start with the fact that many online game servers (ex: Valorant, Apex, Overwatch) artificially increase everyone’s latency at the server, except for the people with higher network latency in order to compensate for lag through a technique called lag compensation. So having 10 ms ping and 50 ms ping just means the server introduces a 40ms delay on the player with 10ms ping so both players experience the same latency.

                Or maybe you could explain how game state updates happen with a set frequency and the gap between the state updates can also be adjusted by the server for each client so that state updates are sent to higher latency users earlier in the update window. I mean this technique is essentially lag compensation as well, but it applies to how the client updates are sent instead of being applied to incoming packets.

                Or, you could avoid all this and simply declare me incorrect by pointing at a game that doesn’t use lag compensation or otherwise move the goal posts so that you don’t actually have to explain the complexity that you were hinting at.

            • ubergeek@lemmy.today
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              Previous satellite Internet using satellites in geosynchronous orbit had 1500ms latency, for comparison.

              Yes, and are far more stable, not hyped, and are already at pretty much peak congestion. Starlink will get progressively worse, the more people use it. Right now, it’s over provisioned.

              The point is, unless you’re playing some hyper competitive game where a 30ms difference in reaction time is noticeable (

              Ever try a voice call with 30ms of latency?

              • null@lemmy.nullspace.lol
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                Ever try a voice call with 30ms of latency?

                Lol what? You’re not gonna notice a 30ms delay in a voice call…

                @ubergeek@lemmy.today downvote with no reply even though you were painfully wrong. Sad.

                • towerful@programming.dev
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                  Yeh, 30ms is still inside the haas delay.
                  If you are a professional listener (sound engineer, musician, dancer) then you can probably perceive it (in a similar way that eyes theoretically only need 25fps, but 60/120/144 is noticeably better).

                  In 30ms, sound can travel 10 meters.
                  So, if you’ve ever had a conversation with someone across a classroom, you’ve had a conversation with 30ms latency.

                  For data, 30ms is 8100 km for electricity over copper, or 6000km for light over fibre.

                  Meaning 30ms over fibre (considering no transmission delays) would be roughly the direct distance between US and UK.

                  So yeh, 30ms is nothing

                • ubergeek@lemmy.today
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                  And I’ll downvote ya again, if I could :)

                  FWIW, I don’t owe you a reply :)

              • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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                Yes, and are far more stable, not hyped, and are already at pretty much peak congestion. Starlink will get progressively worse, the more people use it. Right now, it’s over provisioned.

                They were not more stable. Any occlusion, including thick clouds, would degrade the signal to being unusable. I used Hughsnet for years, then swapped to cellular (100ms+ latency) and finally to Starlink. Starlink is a pretty solid 100Mb/s, with low jitter, packet loss and latency.

                Ever try a voice call with 30ms of latency?

                Yeah, I use voice chat every day, it’s not noticeable.

                • ubergeek@lemmy.today
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                  They were not more stable. Any occlusion, including thick clouds, would degrade the signal to being unusable

                  You have the same issue with Starlink…

                  Yeah, I use voice chat every day, it’s not noticeable.

                  The people on the call do…

        • Pennomi@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          Probably no. Your ping is abnormally high for fiber, I’d expect a sub 10ms ping for you.

          • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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            That makes a lot of assumptions about what I am pinging, and the networking context.

            In my case I was quoting my average ping in VRChat.

            How can you quote 10-50 times higher and then tell me no when I calculate what that means for me?

            Is it because latency does not scale in that way?

            • Anivia@feddit.org
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              Is it because latency does not scale in that way?

              Yes, your understanding is fundamentally flawed. Starlink add a fixed latency on top, if you ping to a server was 2ms with fiber and 52ms with starlink, then your ping to a server that would be 100ms with fiber would be 150ms with starlink

            • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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              5 days ago
              1. Run a traceroute like traceroute cnn com
              2. Kill that by ctrl-c at the third line.
              3. Ping that third IP address.

              Don’t try to ping UK.battle.net or your numbers will be skewed by everything in between.

              • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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                5 days ago

                About 5ms.

                Based on the various replies, it sounds like the poster I was originally replying to does not mean pings in any context.

                They just mean in this context. Along optimal routes. Right?

                • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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                  Of course they don’t mean in every case. Yeah, if you have to go halfway around the world from two addresses that are very far away from hubs, Starlink might be better. 99.99999% of the time this isn’t happening though and fiber will be better. There are situations for some people where it’s worth it. Fiber is better for the average case though, and it’s where money should be invested.

              • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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                So you were only talking about when testing with ideal servers? Why is my example an exception? Are all games an exception?

            • xthexder@l.sw0.com
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              You’re probably really far away from the VR Chat server. Try pinging Google or Cloudflare, which will tell you ping to the nearest datacenter (a rough estimate of ping caused by your local ISP).

              Based on their numbers, you could probably expect 50-100ms to Google, and then add an extra 90ms to get from there to your VR Chat server.

              My personal fiber connection gets under 2ms ping on Speedtest

                • xthexder@l.sw0.com
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                  That makes sense then. When people talk about their ISP ping, they’re usually talking about how long it takes to get out of the ISP’s network. So that 5ms Cloudflare ping is likely pretty close to what people would consider your internet’s ping.

                  Speedtest.net is a really common tool for measuring this, since it will automatically check where the closest server is. For your connection, any ping above 5ms you can probably assume is based on your physical distance to the server, or latency on the server’s end. I’m guessing Google doesn’t have a server quite as close to you as Cloudflare

        • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
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          5 days ago

          My average latency on Starlink over the past year is 32 ms. It varies throughout the day from around 20 to 40 ms.

          If you are getting 90ms on fiber, you are either pinging a server that’s a long ways away or something is very wrong.

          • paraphrand@lemmy.world
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            If you look at the rest of the comments, you’ll see I was taking about my ping in a game. Not my shortest path to a nearby server.

    • Guidy@lemmy.world
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      A subscription that somehow still manages to use surge pricing? I’m assuming that’s the next logical step.

  • ubergeek@lemmy.today
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    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.

      • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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        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.

        • CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world
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          Musk wants control over the entire internet.

          This is the number one reason my friend and I refused to even consider StarLink. We don’t live in the US and do not want all our traffic going through there.

        • iridebikes@lemmy.world
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          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.

    • utopiah@lemmy.world
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      Because of physics.

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

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      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.

      • CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world
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        somewhere, between you and the server you are connected to, the bandwidth is shared.

        But the difference here is that on a fibre connection the shared portion goes over higher speed trunks which gives you most of that 1Gbps bandwidth. A wireless connection has a limited number of slices in the same band that it can share.

        It’s the same issue with too many people on a single WiFi connection.

        • billwashere@lemmy.world
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          Yep very true.

          To me the main benefit of the direct fiber connection is the symmetry. With cable here I’m “supposed” to get “up to” 1000mbs down but my upload speed is at best 40. Moving large files back and forth to work is very painful.

          • CeeBee_Eh@lemmy.world
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            With cable here I’m “supposed” to get “up to” 1000mbs down but my upload speed is at best 40.

            Man, you get 40 up? I’m stuck on 30 up. And the funny thing is that just on the other side of the creek on the other side of my street is where they stopped the fibre rollout.

      • Jason2357@lemmy.ca
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        Technically correct. The best kind of correct ;). He should have said not sharing that last mile connection, like one would share with a satellite downlink.

    • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
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      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 !

    • ChetManly@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      Starlink is 120/mo. Over the past 30 days my average DL is 144Mb, UL 18Mb, with a 27ms ping. It suuuuuuuuuuuuucks, but the only other option is a literal 4Mb DSL for 80$/mo

      • ubergeek@lemmy.today
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        And, wait until Starlink hits saturation… Your speeds will be 1mb down, 300kb up, and latency hitting 100ms…

        You’re only benefiting from early adoption at this time. It can only get worse the more they onboard.

        Starlink is 120/mo.

        How much for install?

        • ChetManly@lemmy.world
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          Dish, router, and long ass cable was on sale for 300. Another 70 for a roof bracket if memory serves.

    • HiTekRedNek@lemmy.world
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      TIL 120 is 4 x 70…

      Edit to add everything below this line

      Downvotes for facts. I pay 120/mo. It’s either this, 3Mbps DSL, or T-Mobile home 5G that works when it feels like it.

      • JordanZ@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        I’m on the mid tier fiber plan(3gbps) with my ISP which is $100 a month. Here’s the results from the daily speed test my router does.

        StarLink is very expensive for the service provided. Its only advantage is the location availability which is essentially anywhere. If they installed fiber to rural areas then its usefulness falls dramatically. I’d rather they invest in more fiber rather than more StarLink satellites that only last about 5 years.

          • Jason2357@lemmy.ca
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            3 days ago

            You lack individual choice by design. You should choose whatever is best for you, obviously, but you can be pissed there’s no fiber running alongside your electricity service.

      • ubergeek@lemmy.today
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        4 days ago

        So, not 4x, but 2x.

        BTW, did you know HughesNet is cheaper, and works just as well. Or, it will work just as well once Starlink reaches the saturation HughesNet faces.

        • HiTekRedNek@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          Physics says otherwise.

          Geostationary orbit, which is where hughesnet satellites are, is approximately 22 THOUSAND miles away.

          That’s a round trip of 44 thousand miles.

          That’s a ping time of 236ms just for the satellite connection, before any other connections are added in.

          That’s worse than my dialup latency was in the 90s

          Meanwhile, my Starlink ping averages less than 40ms, because these satellites are MUCH MUCH closer.

            • HiTekRedNek@lemmy.world
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              4 days ago

              It’s cute that you’re worried about me. But it’s still better than whatever else is currently available at my house. And it will always be better than anything using geostationary orbit.