this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
449 points (85.0% liked)
A Boring Dystopia
9759 readers
1301 users here now
Pictures, Videos, Articles showing just how boring it is to live in a dystopic society, or with signs of a dystopic society.
Rules (Subject to Change)
--Be a Decent Human Being
--Posting news articles: include the source name and exact title from article in your post title
--Posts must have something to do with the topic
--Zero tolerance for Racism/Sexism/Ableism/etc.
--No NSFW content
--Abide by the rules of lemmy.world
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
So I don't really like the idea of defending anything related to Musk, but it's kind of poor form to compare emissions between Starlink and land-based internet imo. Although they are the same product, they are targeted at completely different users, from what I understand.
Starlink should always be a more expensive and slower technology just because of communication distance, so it shouldnt really be able to compete with land-based solutions (except where telecom is reeeeeally fucking people on price). Starlink is really meant more for edge-cases where telecorps refuse to build infrastructure.
Use cases and costs aside, we should still be open to discussing the pros and cons of these business ventures on the planet. Musk isn't going to pay up to clean up any mess caused by this, it would be taxes and price hikes around the world in the name of going green and reducing climate impact that get paid by plebs like us.
Not only this, but StarLink is a new and rapidly growing service so the number of subscribers is still on a steep upward trend. Comparing carbon/subscriber is going to be inaccurate right now due to the low number of starlink subscribers compared to a more established utility with a stable number of users. StarLink also has more new infrastructure needed than an established utility.
That is not correct. The target of Starlink is satellite-to-satellite data routing in as close to a straight line as possible between point A and point B. Even adding the 500Km up and 500Km down, starting at several 1000Kms that's less distance than going through the network of ground fiber cables.
The speed of light in optic fiber cables is also only 2/3 the speed of light in vacuum (aka: space).
Starlink's end form is meant to get billions from charging intercontinental high frequency traders for a split second advantage.