Reminder that an alternative for Starlink is needed, exchange between Musk and the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs

This post was the final straw for me. I deleted all my accounts on non crucial US based services yesterday when I first saw it. I was already angry with what is going on but it was a shallow meme boycott consisting of only drinking kofola now instead of coca cola. It got serious yesterday. Unfortunately I still need to think about the strategy to quit Google since pretty much everything I do is connected to my Gmail.

The irony of elon calling anyone else "small" is hilarious....

Elon is quite large actually, especially his torso.
- Yup, nothing else of him is either big or medium sized. He has some complexes

So Hughes-Net & ViSat aren't a thing ? They're satellite internet companies probably based in Europe, but I could be wrong. (I probably butchered the names)

Also, how rich of Elon, a man whose existence is propped up by government funding to bark & bite the hands that feed them

The main European actor is called Eutelsat. They say they can provide a similar quality of service in Ukraine as Starlink. They have GEO sats and a LEO constellation of around 650 satellites.
They use higher orbiting satellites which come with some trade-offs, lower speeds higher latency and more easily disrupted by weather events. When they say there is no competition they mean in terms of what you get and as much as I hate the man he isn't wrong there is nothing to compete with starlink right now
Both seem to be US companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viasat_(American_company), https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_Network_Systems

Rubio shouted at Musk, so poor Elon took it out on a foreign country's government official and called him "little man"

Put them down like rabid dogs.

Starlink is just putting up cubesats with basic programming variations. The EU space agency can easily provide a competitive service that values freedom and democracy.

The "putting up" is hard to do, especially cheaply.
"easily"

Hubris. This is hubris.

Nemesis will follow, motherfucker, the Moires don't fuck around.

BYD is already eating Tesla's lunch and I'm waiting for another to replace SpaceX.

Oligarchs used to act the part, and have the appearance of being "classy".

Now Oligarchs are just a bunch of 4chan users.

Wtf is: "Be quiet, small man"

That's not an elegant way of speaking.

These people are supposed to be "upper class"?

🤣

Nah, Elon thinks it's elegant. As in "Ha ha, I spoke like a big boy. I heard that badass line on TV once, on one of those shows I'm not supposed to watch. Bet that guy is now red on face and is so distraught he won't be able to eat broccoli on supper and his mom will yell at him. Owned."
Really dude ?? 4Chaners are smarter than Elon, Elon is the definition of rock-bottom
- They're just as obnoxious as he is.
That's how dumb shit argue on the Internet. Ad hominem.

Disgusting. Why the FUCK would you talk to our allies this way? The guy is a polish government official.. (I mean obviously I know why, Elon is a megalomaniac).

"Small man"??? WTF. I hate it.

You wouldn't talk to your allies that way. Which once again makes it clear that the current US administration no longer sees Europe as allies.
- America as whole sees you as meatshields against the Russian bear

If America was a real country this guy would've immediately been removed from any and all companies he runs.

Does SpaceX not have a board?

SpaceX bggest customer by far is the US gvernment. Obviously that is run by Musk, so they will not fire him.
- But why? Why did t NASA do this. Instead government funded it and a private citizen controls it and gets all the benefits.
They’re all his pawns

Don't let the fascists fool you, there are alternatives to Starlink. Eutelsat in France, Telesat in Canada and Inmarsat in the UK, just to name a few examples.

Why is starlink being used, do you know?
- Starlink has enough uplink to be able to handle live video streams and a latency low enough to do this with simple tools.
  
  I’m not sure if that still happens, but I’ve seen some pictures of Ukrainian command bunkers literally getting drone feeds using discord screen share.
- It’s faster, cheaper, and on the tech side more reliable (definitely not politically reliable though).
- Now, I don't know, but I would assume its the latency. Starlink has a (impressively) low ping of < 100ms, while existing alternatives usually have 600ms+. Now, that's only relevant if they are using it for stuff like flying drones.
- My guess is better coverage and latency with its sheer number of satellites.
  
  They use low earth orbit, which require them to use more satellites, but lowered latency.

TBH I think any more low orbit telecom satellite arrays than we already have are just going to become a huge problem in the following decades.

I hate the fact that they just got "permission" to destroy the view of the nightsky.
Starlink is already being a problem currently, and it's not even fully deployed
This has been commented before.

Starlink flies at a very low altitude, meaning relatively high atmospheric drag, and a very short period of time before their sats deorbit if they go dead, less than ten years.

It's nowhere near the problem everyone makes it out to be.
- Until we find out that not nearly as much burns up on re-entry as assumed and they've been raining carcinogens for decades.
- Official statemens claim they run for about 5 years, deorbit anywhere, and do NOT always burn up in reentry.

But what SpaceX does is so cool, and for the greater good of the humanity!

/s

This post has more upvotes on Lemmy than Reddit

Let my add one more then!

"My starlink system". He's literally a walking, talking "you made this? I made this" meme.

I get what you're saying, but I refer to my car as...my car. I didn't turn a wrench in its construction, nor did I design it, but it's still mine.
Except for the fact that he doesn't make anything, he pays people who do, then takes the credit for it. Is his way with everything: companies, gaming profiles...
I reread and still don't see what you're quoting.
- "I literally challenged Putin to one on one physical combat over Ukraine and my starlink system is the backbone of the Ukrainian army."
  
  It's the first sentence of the quoted tweet.
- The interior, initial Musk tweet. It's a snippet in the middle of a sentence.

It's time for Europe to finally get their own solutions.

It's called One Web by Eutelsat. Same latency and reliability, but less Mb/s about 70 Mb/s (and does it matter much for the few Kb packets to relay small amounts of data?).
- Awesome hopefully it will improve and be a contender world wide.
Here's one: https://www.skydsl.eu/en-DE/Personal/Satellite-internet/Tariffs/Private/Overview

Seems to be about half as expensive as Starlink. 700ms latency though. So you won't be gaming skydsl.
- Promising , I bet th latency will improve with time , very good

When the war was turning in Ukraine's favor and they were about to push into Russia, he shut it off and crippled their counter offensive. I remember. Fuck Elon and fuck starlink.

Which is why Starlink needs to be confiscated and managed by NATO. Somebody has to operate it, and it should be an entity who is on the side of Freedom amd Democracy.
- It's not that easy to confiscate sattelites
Not push into Russia, but attempting to retake Crimea.
- ~~They're presumably talking about the Kursk Oblast.~~ Edit: probably not, see responses.
Oh no I'm hearing from people that wa a technical glitch.
Close. There was a geobarrier that he refused to remove. Because attacks against Russia are aggression.

Ah, the full Hitler, a bold move let’s see how it plays out.

He also challenged Zuck to a cage match and chickened out when Zuck accepted. They’re both pieces of shit.

He even chickened out of his recent offer to come on the Daily Show and debate Job Stewart! He's a Nazi coward even when it's just talking...
- Did he officially bow out then? Jon gave him all the conditions he wanted too...
Lol I forgot about that! Yeah fuck em both of course, but I feel like most folks would put their money on the ex-KGB agent who seized and kept control of freakin' Russia over nepo-baby "gamer", "engineer" Musk. What a goofy threat. And I say that as a middling gamer and engineer myself lol
- Putin also practiced judo for most of his life. Musk won’t be standing for long during the match.
- feel like most folks would put their money on the ex-KGB agent who seized and kept contr
  
  Putin is 5' 7", like 160 lbs, and 70 years old. Elon is 6'2", probably 200 lbs, and 52 years old.
  
  I don't think fitness and training can overcome 20 years, 50 lbs, and a full head of height.
- It’s Zuck and Elon not Elon and Putin.
I hate Zuck but in this match I’m thinking if it’s not mutually assured destruction, then I might root for Zuck. Elon is becoming a very big problem.
- Zuck is actually fit, trains, and is 10 years younger, hence why Elon chickened out.
- Or 400 pounds of semtex under the cage. 2 birds, one ring.

Also a reminder that everyone who is not a Musk sheep should leave Twitter.

Elon is an absolute clown there are alternatives they just aren’t as robust at this time.

Hey, rest of the Democratic world, there are a whole bunch of ex feds right now needing funds and direction for their anger. Maybe you should tap into them if you need someone to rid you of this meddlesome Chancellor.

did elon really say "pipe down pipsqueek" like that worked well for drake? man people with canadian citizenship gotta stop doing that.

I think the ritual to siphon all Canadian aggression into Justin Bieber every year is beginning to fail.
Soary :(

Is this exchange real? Surely this can't be, right?

It is real and my biggest concern right now is that European politicians seem so quiet about this. This conversation, including Rubio's comment, is scandalous.
Musk has completely lost touch with reality at this point and thinks he's god.
- That's what being completely fucked up on disassociatives all day everyday day will do to you.
  
  Being one the richest men in the world and completely unaccountable sure as shit doesn't help.
He's a ketamine addict, so that's probably affecting his cognitive facilities to a degree.
- What are the clinical manifestations of Ketamine addiction? I'm asking honestly, because I don't know, and I wonder if he ticks the boxes.
Looks like it is real https://nitter.net/elonmusk/status/1898759859459203457#m
- OK, so this is where things are now. Wow.
https://kyivindependent.com/poland-will-seek-alternatives-if-musk-cuts-ukraines-starlink-access-sikorski-says/
- Given Musk's latest remarks, they need to implement an alternative yesterday. I fully expect Starlink to be cut on Monday.
Why couldn’t it be. I don’t understand at this point how people can read shit like this and go ‘no way he would say that’

I can’t stand the fact that Poland is doing Literally What they wanted - spending a lot of money on defence. Yet, they bark at them.

nothing will ever be good enough for the fascist. the point is not deals, the point is capitulation. there are winners and losers to the fascist. there is no mutual aid or benefit
- Thou are right! Someone once said that
  
  The US does not have allies. The US has only countries that are useful for a while.

That would be Eutelsat, but it is smaller in scale (at the moment) and therefore more expensive. It's also said to be less userfriendly, but that should be possible to fix.

There's so many places where strategically important resources have been delegated wholesale to the US. Now, concerning mankind, it's theoretically better, of course, to not overdo it with wasteful redundancies. But, unfortunately, we're not talking about some kind of UN-controlled infrastructure, which is maintained and used internationally. Unfortunately, it's controlled by people like this, and that is now coming home to roost.

I mean with the right President there would be reason to take it under the Defense Production Act or civil forfeiture. But Democrats will surely squeal, "our hands out tied" until the next Republican gets elected.

More competition will ensure the oligarchs to behave.

I don't trust the EU tech owners, but I recognize that they are at an disadvantage to the US counterpart (and nationalism is a useful tool to sell their product) so they won't be making overt moves to dismantle European democracy.

It’s really really really not up to trust! Imagine if bec of eu oligarchs thousands of folks died because said oligarchs refused to pay for peoples healthcare!

The one remaining guillotine in France would go around!
- So there really is one still in existence? So, like, if a prototype were needed ( just hypothetically speaking, of course), to build more, that could be done?
  
  Asking for a friend. . . Of a friend.

Pride goeth before the fall, they say. The hellish part is the wait.

There are alternatives to starlink though. This guy thinks he owns it all

The shares of the most likely alternative are going through the roof.

Isn’t OneWeb constellation is debated until Iris2 is available?

But we should reconsider the SpaceX launch contracts.

They’re both targeted towards commercial or government business, which is unfortunate from an individual subscriber perspective. I would love to see a euro competitor to Starlink and Kuiper, so I can unplug my Starlink.

Iris2 looks like a traditional Euro project with a dozen companies from different countries involved, to make sure the funding isn’t concentrated in one country. SpaceX has the advantage of improved integration in comparison.
- Well. In my opinion it is about substitues for Ukraine.
We should consider buying and nationalizing starlink. It's apparently critical for national defense and security, so it would make perfect sense to nationalize it.
- In a perfect world, yes. No one in the current administration and no GOP member in congress wants it, hell, the supreme court might even revoque it if suggested because Vladimir Vladimirovich, our dear leader would not allow the orange governor of neorussland to do it.
We should reconsider every thing associated with this psychopath… which is why he would stop at nothing until he owned those who might challenge him. Elon may be the most significant threat the western world faces at this time, and I don’t think the solution will come from inside his captured governments.

An alternative sure, but not in the manner. StarLink is already filling up the air space and producing a ton of new space debris. It needs to die with an entirely different alternative.

The alternative is putting up "do you want free training on operating a small bulldozer?" signs everywhere, hiring the humans who show up, and laying down underground cable or telephone poles everywhere. Fuck, just slap a "national defense" reason for why there needs to be internet everywhere for military communications.

Starlink outshines in latency vs undersea cables. Small drones use small radios, bigger drones can use bigger military satellites. Just build out communication to rural areas already. Integrate comm lines into road maintenance crews.
EU could knock them out of the sky.
What is the alternative?

Geostationary needs a lot more power to transmit.
- What is the alternative?
  
  Underground fiber. The thing we paid all our telecoms to install back in the 90s, which they promptly didn't do after pocketing all the money.
- That's not even the issue with geostationary. The problem is latency to/from satellites in geostationary orbit.