Huge fan of Alec, seen most his vids and yeah I caught that earlier this week, including the full ending.
I agree with and love every bit of that video except for that part about Starlink. Everything in his video aligns with my view of the world and I learned a ton of stuff as well, but I feel like this one I would have to sit down and think about a lot more.
It seemed out of place in the video in fact. I brushed it off and didn’t go further down the rabbit hole, but nothing he said changes my mind immediately on this particular matter. Everything else in the video made total sense and easily defensible.
I am realizing now that perhaps this was simply a cheap jab at Elon - Just because everyone hates Elon right now. You have me thinking and maybe I’ll rewatch it and think through this a lot more. I don’t recall him saying anything specific against Elon himself. Prob a dramatic eye roll?
IIRC his point was that 5G to every household is better than an ISP satellite constellation. That felt like it was ignoring so much including national security (for USA at least), global impact, and upgrade costs.
(Edit: made a more formal comment closer to the root of the thread)
Why? Launching shit into space is hard as fuck and has an enormous carbon footprint. You can build A LOT of cellular infrastructure for the same cost and impact.
And building your internet infrastructure in your own territory instead of floating in space will make it a lot harder for China to shoot with their badass microwave canon.
And I’m just a common idiot, but I’d wager upgrading satellite infrastructure is going to be slightly more expensive than terrestrial infrastructure. There’s a reason we’re still using a lot of satellite infrastructure from the 1980s.
Starlink satellites are disposable from the start. They have a five year lifespan before deorbiting and burning up. So launches continue forever. So basically upgrades just come as they come, the mechanism is already in place. No clue on how costs compare with upgrading hundreds of thousands of terrestrial towers every 10 years or whatever is needed.
Agreed that domestic benefits would require far more analysis than I’m capable of.
Huge fan of Alec, seen most his vids and yeah I caught that earlier this week, including the full ending.
I agree with and love every bit of that video except for that part about Starlink. Everything in his video aligns with my view of the world and I learned a ton of stuff as well, but I feel like this one I would have to sit down and think about a lot more.
It seemed out of place in the video in fact. I brushed it off and didn’t go further down the rabbit hole, but nothing he said changes my mind immediately on this particular matter. Everything else in the video made total sense and easily defensible.
I am realizing now that perhaps this was simply a cheap jab at Elon - Just because everyone hates Elon right now. You have me thinking and maybe I’ll rewatch it and think through this a lot more. I don’t recall him saying anything specific against Elon himself. Prob a dramatic eye roll?
What didn’t make sense about his point?
IIRC his point was that 5G to every household is better than an ISP satellite constellation. That felt like it was ignoring so much including national security (for USA at least), global impact, and upgrade costs.
(Edit: made a more formal comment closer to the root of the thread)
Why? Launching shit into space is hard as fuck and has an enormous carbon footprint. You can build A LOT of cellular infrastructure for the same cost and impact.
And building your internet infrastructure in your own territory instead of floating in space will make it a lot harder for China to shoot with their badass microwave canon.
And I’m just a common idiot, but I’d wager upgrading satellite infrastructure is going to be slightly more expensive than terrestrial infrastructure. There’s a reason we’re still using a lot of satellite infrastructure from the 1980s.
Starlink satellites are disposable from the start. They have a five year lifespan before deorbiting and burning up. So launches continue forever. So basically upgrades just come as they come, the mechanism is already in place. No clue on how costs compare with upgrading hundreds of thousands of terrestrial towers every 10 years or whatever is needed.
Agreed that domestic benefits would require far more analysis than I’m capable of.