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It’s always a good moment to remember that it must still be proven that ice creams are not good for your health.

The nutritionists who have tried to prove that evident theory have all admitted that the health benefits of the ice cream are akin to those of the yogurt.

Edit: even though, I’m avoiding emulsifiers like e-471, e-472 and so on.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35562705


> The nutritionists who have tried to prove that evident theory have all admitted that the health benefits of the ice cream are akin to those of the yogurt.

That doesn't sound like they "admitted" to anything. It can at the same time have the health benefits of yogurt, and be bad for you.

In the particular case of ice cream, what makes you think it's healthy despite the high calorie and sugar content? All I could find was a study from 2018 [0], which specifically investigated diabetes 2 patients (who are very conscious about their sugar intake) and didn't control for the rest of their diet. Any claim that the amounts of sugar in ice cream are net beneficial for you will need extraordinary amounts of evidence.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/05/ice-cre...


*Rethinking evidence from BYU researchers adds nuance to that message, suggesting not all sugar sources carry the same risk. In the largest and most comprehensive meta-analysis of its kind, BYU researchers—in collaboration with researchers from Germany-based institutions—found that the type and source of sugar may matter far more than previously thought. Researchers analyzed data from over half a million people across multiple continents, revealing a surprising twist: sugar consumed through beverages—like soda and even fruit juice—was consistently linked to a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes (T2D). Meanwhile, other sugar sources showed no such link and, in some cases, were even associated with a lower risk. “This is the first study to draw clear dose-response relationships between different sugar sources and type 2 diabetes risk,” said Karen Della Corte, lead author and BYU nutritional science professor. “It highlights why drinking your sugar—whether from soda or juice—is more problematic for health than eating it.” https://news.byu.edu/intellect/rethinking-sugar-byu-study-sh...


This is pretty well-accepted as far as I'm aware — but I don't think anyone has sufficiently shown that the sugar in ice cream is less risky than sugar in, say, fruits or yogurt (which often has 5-10x less!)

AFAIK, the leading theory is also that this is because fruits have other ingredients that help process the sugar — whereas ultra-processed food like ice cream doesn't, especially if there are added sugars.

You can't just freeze a soda, eat it, and then expect it to be healthy.


Fruits mostly have much less sugar period, it's not really other ingredients that help process it. (Unless you over-ingest them by juicing, in which case OJ can be just as bad as Coke.) And yogurt is often full of just as much sugar as ice cream.

The main theory around why ice cream doesn't show the negative effects is that the sugar is mostly trapped in a fat matrix that takes a long time to break apart and therefore to digest and release the sugars. So there's very little harmful sugar spike in the blood, and the carb intake surprisingly becomes more akin to e.g. slow-digesting unprocessed whole grains (obviously without benefits of fiber or other whole-grain nutrients).

Of course it's also very different if we're talking about plain chocolate ice cream, vs filled with ribbons of caramel and chocolate-coated candy pieces, which will produce sugar spikes. And of course it's also not accounting for overeating, ice cream or not. If you eat calories you don't need, it's going to make you fat no matter whether it's ice cream or something else.


I put 3 sugar cubes in my coffee every day. So I divide the weight of the box of sugar cubes and it results in 1 sugar cube = 3.5 grams. Thats 10.8 grams per 12 oz of coffee.

A 12oz can of Dr. Pepper soda has 40 grams of sugar. Divided by my aforementioned mass per cube, it yields 11 sugar cubes.

Either I messed up the math or soda is crazy; i can't imagine munching down 11 sugar cubes in one sitting.

TLDR:

12oz coffee: 10.8 g sugar, 3 cubes

12oz soda: 40g sugar, 11 cubes


There's also the effect of (fruit) fiber.


I believe that excess sugar would be the issue, Yogurt contains no sugar


Yes. Maybe eaten sugar is less harmful than drinking it. That’s what the latest evidence suggests


In the case of ice cream, do you really eat it or drink it though ?


Depends on the yogurt. Many commercial yogurts in the US have added sugar.


Somehow, Americans adding sugar to yogurt doesn't surprise me.


No normal person is eating ice cream for health benefits.


I do. And I make my own pistachio ice cream with eggs. It’s basically a “crème brûlée” with milk cream so my kid gets to eat eggs, which are essential for your health

No but in a world of 400 calorie muffins and 700 calorie boba teas it's easy to argue that ice cream is getting a bad rap.


Let me guess before clicking on the link: it was before the fall of the URSS.

Houses are suffering from being at the front of the interest of BlackRock and other almighty lobbies


>Houses are suffering from being at the front of the interest of BlackRock and other almighty lobbies

Blackrock and "other almighty lobbies" (Chamber of Commerce?) are showing up to city council meetings to block housing from getting built?


Everyone wants to think it’s BlackRock instead of the reality that the reason housing shortages exist is to protect the retirement nest egg of Boomers, ie their house equity, by making it effectively illegal to build housing. Sorry to say it’s not a cartoon capitalist villain, but instead your neighbors trying to protect their (inflated) “home value”.


SUVs are higher than cars, making them deadlier


Newborn Stroller babies are not asking to be looking at a tablet. It’s the parents.

Newborn Babies do not ask to watch YouTubes while being fed ultra-processed food.

It’s the parents who purchase all those electronic devices to their children. I gather that they do it because shutting them off is illegal and irreversible


No. Try actually asking someone who's raised kids recently.


I’m raising two kids right now (4 & 6) and I agree with them. Strollers with built-in tablets are abhorrent and shitty parenting.

Learning how to be ‘bored’ is an important part of growing up, and any parent that is not teaching their children that lesson is failing their children.


When I was a kid and got bored I roamed the creek or biked miles around. Sometimes even with a real or bb gun.

All these things now end in arrest or investigation or at the least a Karen stirring up shit, unless you are real rural. I weep for today's kids. You can do almost nothing nowadays what I did as a kid unless your parents are rich enough to not work and accompany you. The parents want to let their boredom drive them to discover the world, but they usually can't. Instead they're locked in with a tablet where a Karen can't snitch on them for being a kid.


This is such a lost experience. I was a “free range kid” well before that term was coined. It was wonderful. I occasionally got in trouble, but mostly I explored the world and learned a lot.

A student recently asked me if I was ever bored. I said no. They had a hard time believing me. I pointed out that the world is endlessly interesting if you just look at it. This table— who made it? Why was it made this way? What is it made from? How was THAT made? And so on. Even dirt is fascinating. I remember biology teacher demonstrating with a microscope that a small sample of soil contains countless microbes…

I hope that people will eventually grow out of the fascination with online/social media, but I am not optimistic. But if they do, come join the rest of the folks who are having fun in the real world.


I don’t think we should raise ‘fun in the real world’ on a pedestal higher than ‘fun in the digital world’. The problem isn’t whether the fun is digital or real, the problem is that the digital fun isn’t really fun, but drugs. Real drugs aren’t legal, and the same should be true for their digital equivalent.


There's been pushback against this, 8 states have passed “Reasonable Childhood Independence” laws since 2018, Georgia in the last few days, and more will.


There are still places where you can experience these things without "Karen" ruining your life. Smaller towns basically anywhere provide the statistical cover you are looking for. When you dial the density up to a certain threshold, these people become unavoidable.


I have a 5 year old, it takes effort to not expose them to phones and tablets, it's a conscious choice. We even avoid them when driving for a couple of hours, instead she can draw in a coloring book or we can play disney songs on the radio. It's all habits, how come our kid can sit alone in the back seat for an hour and not make a fuss, but her cousin needs mom to sit with her in the back seat for even a short drive. Mostly what I observe is parents using phones as a pacifier when they need the kid to sit still for awhile.


Yeah gotta love those 'cool' parents who even brag how they easily travel with small kids in their cars for a long time. Then you look at the car and of course there is a tablet in front of each kid.

'Bbbut kids then cry and scream!' Well yeah, thats how you raised them overall, don't expect miracles suddenly, world doesn't revolve around you and certainly kids don't.

Fyi our small kids (3 and 5) can handle that 'boredom' of day-long travel without any device just fine. But its due to them being raised without screens, and their parents not being constantly glued to same thing. So they just watch the country go by, go through a book or two, draw with pencil on paper (yes, its still a thing), we talk to them and entertain them and so on.


Your kids are soon going to notice the glowing entrancing screen that other kids (their friends) have access to, and they will absolutely hate you for denying them the same fun. Tale as old as time.


Admittedly not my kids, but my experience of how "tablet/phone banned" kids actually act in that case is "why are these other kids being so boring"

But these kids are pretty well looked after, 24/7 parent available, high engagement parenting. The kids just find stuff in the real world to do. They get 30 minutes of "group" screen time a day, as in the family sits down together and watches something.

I have the same feeling when I see adults on their phones to be honest, and I'm quite introverted. Just feels like a sterile community to be in.


I think what you're referring to isn't actually "raising".


Somebody should just sell reused tire scraps as chewing gum replacements. The artificial substitutes are still much too expensive


Isn’t Google degrading your user experience well enough?


Here, in Spain, internet access is cut off for many websites during football matches because La Liga, the association football league, is in war against cloudflare for not blocking their allegedly offending websites. Or something like that.

Today, I tried to look up a word on a dictionary and I got an error message. “There must be a football game going on right now”. I thought


I'm beginning to think Europe needs to just dry out from soccer for a year or two.

Like, we're impacting communications now.


This isn't a football problem, it's a "company has way too much power" problem. It's as if Coca-Cola were allowed to tell my water company to turn off my tap water for a few hours because I should be drinking their soda at lunchtime.


this literally happens in mexico, monterrey in 2022 during biggest drought in the century, public supply was shut down while coca-cola keep producing soft drink from that reservoir, they end-up give some percentage back after a protest.

https://www.jornada.com.mx/2022/08/06/estados/022n1est


Wow, I try to come up with an exaggerated hypothetical and it turns out to be a real example. We live in a ridiculous world.


> We live in a ridiculous world.

Let The Market™ decide on access to drinking water:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_privatization



Look up artisanal oil refining.


That's why I haven't taken life so seriously and been as uptight about things in recent years; because life sure as hell doesn't take us serious lol


I need to try out this line on my manager in stand-up later today.


Yes, that'll get you right.


Your hypothetical involved Coca-Cola directing the service cutoff. It doesn't sound like that was real.


We live in societies where private corporations are


Late-stage capitalism - the future is now.


That’s not literally the same thing, it was a protest over them for not “connect wells of their property to the public service supply network.”

Which isn’t something I’d want random companies to be doing, and a figurative drop in the bucket.


It's the same aquifer though, right?


If the factory had simply shut down without hooking up their infrastructure, the area still would have had the exact same short term issues.

The issue was arguably a lack of wells in an extreme situation, not a lack of water in the aquifer.


Aquifers are not infinite in capacity, so it's a valid point.


Again not what this was about.

If the area can’t support the factories water use then shut down the factory permanently. Wanting to hook up to its infrastructure is all about a lack of public infrastructure.

Many aquifers are over used, but that’s a long term problem and has nothing to do with a drought in a single year.


One drop in an empty bucket is infinitely more water.


> One drop in an empty bucket is infinitely more water.

No multiply 0 by infinity and you don’t get one drop, ie 1/0 is undefined.

Further it wasn’t an empty bucket.


In this case, as bucket content aproaches 0 drops, 1 drop becomes infinitely more, at least in calculus.

Limits in calculus: "When a real function can be expressed as a fraction whose denominator tends to zero, the output of the function becomes arbitrarily large, and is said to "tend to infinity" For example, the reciprocal function, f ( x ) = 1/x tends to infinity as x tends to 0.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_by_zero


Tends to infinity != infinity. Also, the fundamental theory of calculus requires a continuous function.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorem_of_calculu...


You think it's possible for a bucket to contain a negative amount of water?

I should note that the product of zero and infinity being an indeterminate form is actually a result about the product of an infinitesimal (of small but indefinite magnitude) and an infinite value. If when you say "zero", you actually mean "zero", there is no ambiguity: zero is more infinitesimal than any infinite value is infinite, and the product of zero with anything, including an infinitely large value, is zero.


> You think it's possible for a bucket to contain a negative amount of water?

Irrelevant, the discontinuity occurs at 0 not a negative number.

The limit of f(X) = (X-2)/(X-2) as X approaches 2 is 1, that doesn’t mean the function has a defined value at 2. Limits seem easy because most students really don’t understand limits and thus misuse them.


Quantum physics tells us all particles are waves, so it’s possible that the amount of water will be negative in some point in time, as long as the average value is not negative. ;-)


Zero times any number is zero, but infinity is not a number. In order for multiplication to be valid, your elements must share a field.


Are you trying to make a point? The indeterminate forms are statements about limits. Those limits are statements about the possible range of certain operations on infinitesimal and infinite values. It's perfectly valid to multiply those values. And when zero is one of the multiplicands, it's also the product.

You might want to think about why two times infinity is not an indeterminate form.


I am, thanks for noticing.

If you extend your field to include infinity (e.g. the extended reals, or the extended positive reals), only then is it valid to multiply by infinity. One of the rules in such a system is that when infinity is one of the multiplicands, it's also the product. This gives us conflicting results for zero times infinity, therefore 0*∞ is an indeterminate form.


You do not appear to have the slightest idea what you're talking about. For example, the extended reals aren't a field.

But it's easy to extend the real numbers to a field that includes infinite and infinitesimal values. Limiting is then a projection from the hyperreals, which are a field, to the extended reals, which aren't. Instead of "lim", let's call this projection "f".

0·∞ is an indeterminate form because f(f⁻¹(0) · f⁻¹(∞)) is not well defined. f is a many-to-one function, and in this case the different possibilities that come up as we invert it interact differently. In contrast, 2·∞ is not an indeterminate form because, while f⁻¹(2) · f⁻¹(∞) might be any value that is greater than all real numbers, it must always be greater than all real numbers, and therefore f(f⁻¹(2) · f⁻¹(∞)) is always ∞.

> One of the rules in such a system is that when infinity is one of the multiplicands, it's also the product.

In the extended reals, this is a result, not a rule, and it doesn't always hold. Again, the extended reals aren't a field. But even ignoring the question we're actively discussing, you should have been able to think of e.g. -3 · ∞.

That's assuming that when you said "such a system", you meant the extended reals. If you meant a field that extends the reals to include infinite values, it's just meaningless noise - there is no value called "infinity" that would even let you evaluate the claim true or false. But in any multiplication of two values, any infinite value can only simultaneously be the product and one of the multiplicands if the other multiplicand is 1. When we say that 2·∞ = ∞, the ∞ on the left and the one on the right are both infinitely large, but they aren't the same value.


> You do not appear to have the slightest idea what you're talking about. For example, the extended reals aren't a field.

Fair enough. You're right, of course, and you've learned me a thing. Appreciate your time.


Are you in an alternate dimension where Snow Crash literally happened?!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash



This type of crazy shit makes me love Canada even more


Its one of the reasons why I am a market based socialist.

The essentials of living should be state owned, and provided as inexpensively or freely as part of being here. And when that doesn't completely work, significant controls be put in place to prevent undue capitalization/financial ideation.

The next tier should be a middle ground of intermediate importance, that companies can fulfill, but with modest controls to allow suitable profit and growth.

The final tier is the new and not-required level. This is the new stuff, the crazy tech. Low/no laws, let everyone in this realm go crazy and experiment. The skies the limit.

But water? This is beyond the pale. And revolutions have gone on for this before.


I might've got a bad translation, but :

> the parastatal Water and Drainage Services of Monterrey

Isn't that already the state owning the water supply?


> This isn't a football problem, it's a "company has way too much power" problem.

This isn't limited to just one company. The problem is how copyright has been abused and over-prioritized until it's become a threat to people's freedoms, to art, and to progress.

Copyright needs to be reined in so that no matter what the company is or what product they're pushing innocent people won't be negatively impacted just so that the industry can squeeze more profit from people while refusing to adapt.


But why does the company have too much power?

Because there's a lot of money at stake surrounding soccer in Europe.


> But why does the company have too much power?

Because they pay the lawmakers to give them this power.


So then why hasn’t Europe made a viable competitor to Cloudflare yet…?


Cloudflare isn't the company with too much power in the above scenario: La Liga is. CF isn't turning off access because they want to, it's because La Liga convinced a court that Cloudflare is promoting "piracy" with the various websites they host (some of which, constituting less than a rounding error of the overall sites they host, may host pirated soccer streams), and convinced a court to have Cloudflare blocked.


Technically LaLiga is only allowed to sue because the gov created aggressive IP/piracy rules, such as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ley_Sinde

They were given those powers in court over Cloudflare via the Spanish government, with some help via a pressure campaign by US gov to protect US copyright globally.


That said, Cloudflare absolutely has too much power. Centralizing the internet makes it fragile and maximizes the collateral damage caused by draconian copyright enforcement.


If there was a viable competitor, then it wouldn’t matter so much if it was blocked or not…


The same IP rules would apply to anybody hosting any site that could have the pirated streams...


That's a bad thing in this case. I don't want website blocking to be easier.


What makes you think the competitor wouldn't simply be blocked as well?


Because their policies, behavior, etc., likely wouldn’t be 100% identical.


Must be a lack of regulations and compliance procedures giving potential entrepreneurs the legal framework to work within.


the problem here isn't football. It's rampant censoreship and net blocks in the EU. (same problem different methods in other EU countries. In germany theiy raid your home for harmless political satire)


I travel a lot in the EU and the Internet is a total shambles. Blocked stuff everywhere. Right down to VPNs not even working.


You're best off just running a socks proxy to aws.


I’ve taken to just carrying a book with me and reading it instead.


>>In germany theiy raid your home for harmless political satire)

Can you give some examples so we can see what harmless political satire you have in mind?


Andy Grote comes to mind. Someone tweeted "Du bist so 1 Pimmel" (something like "you are such a willy") at him. Got his house searched and everything for that.

Issue here being the fact that insulting someone is a criminial offense (hope that's the correct english terminology) in Germany.

https://theweek.com/news/world-news/954635/willygate-german-...

e:/ Whether this is actual satire or not is up for debate i guess, but this was in my opinion way overblown


> "Du bist so 1 Pimmel" (something like "you are such a willy")

Sure, it's something like that, but it's more like "thou beest such a willy". ;D


What kind of "harmless political satire"? Where can I find more about this?


"Pimmelgate", Stefan Niehoff raid are two examples of hilariously disproportionate law enforcement response for minimal offense.


those are the better k own examples. But its pretty common. Friend of mine got raided for posting a meme that contained a swastika in negative context.


Or, alternatively, we consider whether doing our communications via the same few huge American corporations is actually a good idea. The internet was literally designed to be resilient to enemy attack and look what we've done to it. Decades later, still on IPv4 and using ridiculous hacks to keep it all just barely working.


I know the current situation isn't the most optimal but barely working is an extreme hyperbole.


You're replying to a thread where people lose internet connectivity when a bunch of men are kicking a ball around a field.


This has nothing to do with ipv4/ipv6 and the "ridiculous hacks" we do to keep ipv4 going. Those work just fine. This is a cultural problem, not a technological one.


If we want to use the internet as a communication network then we need peer-to-peer connectivity. We can't get than on IPv4. Resilience is pointless if everyone needs to connect to the same (few) middlemen before they can establish any kind of connection to a peer. It's no better than the old telephone system that needed an exclusive physical link between correspondents.

We almost had this in the early 2000s, but then we regressed. People were excited about meshnets, when was the last time someone mentioned those? Too many people have forgotten and now many have been raised in this current form of the Internet thinking it's the only way. We need to think bigger. We need to push for IPv6 and basic internet connectivity (meaning ability to connect to any peer in the world) as a human right. Otherwise we build our lives around something that can be taken away on a whim over something as silly as grown men kicking a bladder around a field.


The internet attack resilience isn't meant to keep a single node online. It is to keep a communication network active even if parts are destroyed. That part works.


Who cares about a single node? You shouldn't need a node in the middle for two parties to communicate. That's the point.


There seems to be a problem starting new companies in the EU. It's hard to imagine the EU developing alternatives that people would want to use in such an environment.


The problem is not in starting a company. It's in the 20 to 100 million investment if needed: those do not exist here.

You'll get up to 10 million investment from whatever bank + state arrangement no problem. But when you want to scale up you're fucked if it requires money. So no "let's get 1 billion users and then think about milking them" way to do business, you have to be profitable a lot earlier. And you better not require too much R&D.


So why have European capital markets remained so inefficient for so long? I've heard a lot of facile explanations about risk averse culture but I'm not convinced that really explains anything. Culture becomes quite malleable when people have an opportunity to gain enormous amounts of wealth and power.


You say resilient to attack, yet it's also the opposite where it is very very easy for someone to attack someone to the point of removing their online presence. People will DDOS a site for the lulz. People will do it to cause problems for some perceived slight. Some will do it to hurt a competitor. It costs them pretty much nothing to have it happen. For those on the receiving end, it could be devastating. Their only affordable option is to use one of the megaCorp providers.

So it's a "this is why we can't have nice things" more than anything else. The assholes always ruin things in the end. So instead of some idealistic dream of a world, we get this shithole dystopian reality.


La Liga is the problem in this scenario


it s not such a massive thing as it used to

but football teams often have political connections and thus easy access to do such things


People getting riled up about soccer as a way to blow off steam and experience their tribalism is vastly superior to what we have in the USA -- a political environment that people treat like battling football clubs complete with lawless hooligans.

When a soccer team wins they don't get to ascend to power and leverage the state against their enemies.


Surely you're talking about a District Attorney deciding that an individual needs to be charged prima facie and saying he "will find a crime" right?


I expect that's not what they were talking about, but I bet what you are talking about can happen just about anywhere.


I'm sure it could and it's wrong everywhere.


District Attorneys everywhere charge first and then prove the crime afterwards, right?


Well typically a case is referred to them by law enforcement or a criminal complaint, then they review the evidence and decide whether or not to go to trial.

It's much rarer for a DA to say they want to find crimes a particular person committed and then direct others to go find evidence for whatever they can find evidence for.


Which DA went after a particular person without referral by law enforcement or a criminal complaint? If this was really such a breach of ethics, surely it would be trivial for the political party in question to first make a criminal complaint? It's not obvious to me that the complaint/referral matters much?


I don't know how much of this tribalism is confined to the stadium. Personal experience makes me feel like there is a big overlap between Ultras and actual nationalists, but I'd like to see a study.


> When a soccer team wins they don't get to ascend to power and leverage the state against their enemies.

I mean, FIFA is corrupt as hell and there's been plenty of documented cases of other social ills caused by European soccer fandom, but okay.


That sounds insane! Do you have a source?



Ah the old misunderstood IP address. It's not a street address guys!


Even if it were, you still need to prove the person you are accusing is in the building!


This is wild - thank you for the rabbithole



Truly a case where VPNs do make sense.


If they’re blocking all of Cloudflare I would think they could also be able to block popular VPN gateways. It’s wild that a sports league has power to dictate to ISPs like this.


Are you just stuck on it being a sports league? Just s/sports league/entity with lots of money/


No, it's wild that any private entity has the legal censorship authority. My own country is catapulting into authoritarianism, but as far as I'm aware, we haven't gotten to the point yet where private entities are unilaterally disconnecting users from broad swaths of the Internet.


VPNs would not make sense if the actual ISP if blocking you.

Apart from something like starlink and even then they're not playing nice with geographical access most of the time based on politics, whims of a narcissist, or just business.


> VPNs would not make sense if the actual ISP if blocking you.

Unless they are outright blocking your entire connection. That is precisely why one would use a vpn. A vpn most definitely can help get around blocking key words.


you can't solve political issues with technological solutions. Sure you can use VPN, but they always can block more. As the last resort they will have a whitelist of government-approved IPs you can connect to


> you can't solve political issues with technological solutions. Sure you can use VPN, but they always can block more. As the last resort they will have a whitelist of government-approved IPs you can connect to

You are in a thread specifically talking about blocking swaths of the internet because of football games.


Starlink is the only massively global ISP and (as far as I’m aware) has not cut off access for anyone based on their politics or location.


Not quite true, but merits of me saying this is murky (I'm not going to fault Starlink).

In Southern Africa, they were bringing in grey imports of Starlink from the UAE and these units have been blocked.


Except Ukraine


Not true at all, Elon Musk has already cut off access for Ukraine because of his own personal views[1]. There's a reason why he's currently hated in most of Europe.

[1] https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4193788-musk-acknowledges...


That article is heavily slanted, while providing the facts hidden in the text: Starlink was never enabled in Sevastopol. Musk simply denied an informal request to enable it to be used in a first strike, and deferred that decision to the DoD, which he contacted.

Which is the correct thing to do when random people ask private companies to go to war.


What a villain.


Maybe DDoS their fax machines? "Toner or paper is empty!!!", white on black, 999 copies. sigh


Did anyone actually ever attempt the faxing a piece of black construction paper on an old sheet fed fax machine where you tape the top to the bottom prank? Was that even possible, or just urban legend?


I've never heard of anyone making a paper roll with tape but I've definitely seen pranksters fax sheet after sheet of full black to waste paper and ink.


I have Starlink and it doesn’t seem to be affected in Spain, but I could be wrong. I just haven’t noticed it.


Why would it? That's a network in space. Could the Spanish league force a US company to block specific satellites covering some part of Spain and some part of not Spain? Seems a stretch.


Why do you think it's a stretch? If Starlink wants to legally operate in a country as an ISP then it has to comply with the laws of that country. Just because it's using satellites instead of locally deployed physical infrastructure doesn't absolve it from ISP and general telecomunications regulations of a country.

So if the Spanish government were to make a law saying all ISPs must block the following domains for whatever reason, then Starlink must also comply in that jurisdiction or face fines or get booted out, and I don't know many businesses that take pleasure in being in contempt of the courts.


Out of curiosity, is there anything technical the Spanish authorities could do to block Starlink (i.e jamming)? Or are legal/bureaucratic measures the only solution?


They can roll up to the starlink ground station and turn of the power or cut the cords.

Edit" it looks like the inter-satellite capacity might be able to handle more than I thought

https://mikepuchol.com/modeling-starlink-capacity-843b2387f5...


I believe I recall them bragging about increases to horizontal bandwidth in the later designs. You may be thinking of the original network?


IIRC, Originally they had none


Starlink terminals are jammable, but the jamming source will need to be in it's FOV and it uses quite a focused beam. Not particularly viable for an entire nation.

The ground stations would be a lot more vulnerable, but cutting the cable would be a lot easier than flying a Ku/Ka band jammer overhead.


There are countries where starlink isn’t available. But if you get one from a nearby country and keep quiet it works.

Spain isn’t large enough, I suspect. But they can lean on starlink as long as they’re sold there.


Hopefully not something that can happen in Spain, but in authoritarian countries they simply arrest or otherwise penalize the end users.


Booted out of where, space?


Booted out of the market. Payments, banking, interconnection, contractual agreements.

Businesses exist solely at the pleasure of the state. The state runs the courts; they can invalidate your ability to enforce contracts.

Until and unless they smuggle the dishes into the country like bricks of cocaine and allow subscription payments in bitcoin, local governments can and will regulate Starlink service and users.


Starlinks isnt a charity, so they collect payments for service and payments are not going through space for sure


Booted out of the country mate. Why are you acting daft? Do you think Starlink could operate in Spain without a regional/EU branch that serves Spanish customers, collects payments, pays Spanish/EU taxes and can be summoned to court if it doesn't follow Spanish laws?

That's why Starlink has geofencing in place so they can ensure it operates only in regions they're legally autorized to, it's not some pirate HAM network that can just freely operate while evading local laws willy nilly.


HAM isn't an acronym, FYI.

If you break the internet and summon starlink yes I think pirates will take the void.


How many pirate ISPs exist in EU? How many of them have satellites in orbit?


How many ibuprofen pirates are there in Europe? None, because it's easy enough to get it without a cartel operation.

Making wanted goods and services illegal just hands profits to the black market, it doesn't stop them. If Spain bans the internet there will be pirate ISPs tomorrow.


>it doesn't stop them.

Yeah? Where are the pirate ISPs of North Korea then?

Mate, you're fighting with ghosts here. There are legit ISPs in EU, you don't need pirate ones. And there are legit VPNs to bypass whatever soft government restrictions are in place. There's no point arguing about endless made up hypotheticals.


Do we suspect there's significant demand for internet in North Korea? Market potential, sure. But I'm guessing if you asked North Korea what information distribution they wanted, they would say they just want a more honest newspaper.


>Do we suspect there's significant demand for internet in North Korea?

Why not? They literally throw USB sticks and optical media over the border. After my country broke away from communism, content consumption of foreign media was the highest priority.


> How many ibuprofen pirates are there in Europe? None, because it's easy enough to get it without a cartel operation.

In a lot of Europe, you can only buy a handful at a time (like 16), at a relatively hefty per-tablet price and only from a pharmacy (good luck on sunday in a lot of places).

In France, you can’t just grab it off the shelf yourself anymore: https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20200115-pharmacies-ordered-sel...

Sometimes I leave part of my 500 ct bottle from Amerika because I don’t know why I bought so many in the first place.


It could using crypto, but Spain would complain to the USA and they'd back down.


Three years ago they would. Not for the next four.


> Three years ago they would. Not for the next four.

You must be fun at parties.

Why do you think so ? They kissed American ass for a long time. Why should they stop ?


Starlink does come back to earth often in the same country or region as the user. Then it would fall under all the same blocking.


I imagine that the blocking is semi-voluntary by the local ISPs, not at a transit or peering level.

Anyhow, I flicked through the tables for Starlink's Spain IP address blocks and they directly peer with Cloudflare, so short of Starlink agreeing to perform similar blocking itself or worse yet de peering with Cloudflare, I'd expect availability through them.


I think the relevant quote here is, "they can shake their fist at the sky".


Satellite internet isn't a philanthropy project. Whoever's selling it is operating a retail front in the client's country, running payment processing and delivering or shipping physical satellite dishes. Even if the satellite vendor is aligned with your interests (I'm not touching that third-rail topic)—if your government doesn't want you to have satellite internet, you won't have it.

Satellites aren't, in practice and for the time being, a technological end-run around sovereignty and the practical ability of governments to censor internet access.

It's been discussed on HN before, that even first-world democracies, such as the UK [0,1], feel comfortable enacting laws banning satellite internet.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42979869 ("Starlink in the Falkland Islands – A national emergency situation? (openfalklands.com)", 225 comments)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37645945 ("Saint Helena Island Communications (sainthelenaisland.info)", 145 comments)


Interestingly, I don't think you have to purchase the starlink in the same country you plan to use it (else what would be the point of the Mini version).


"they fan shake their fist at the sky... and with the other hand strangle payments that are very much terrestrial"


Starlink doesn't defy local governments except when the US government greenlights it (offering service in Iran.)


Would be interesting if they could jam starlink by tracking/blocking the laser coming off the spacecraft (satellite) probably far fetched


Tracking satellites is computationally intensive, Starlink has many satellites, and friends generally don't jam friends' communication satellites.

The old jokes about aggressive NFL Copyright enforcement would really pale in comparison to Spain developing a mature anti-satellite capability in order to disrupt soccer broadcast piracy at the physical layer.


> Tracking satellites is computationally intensive

Is it? I've seen a guy doing it by hand with a YAGI antenna and a little handled radio. But I could see it for many and the phased part. Also people have web models like this one showing the orbits.

https://satellitemap.space/

Anyway yeah just mental exercise not really arguing for it


Its much easier to ban imports and periodically do sweeps to locate terminals on the ground and confiscate/arrest the criminals operating them illegally. A Cessna or helicopter with GPS and directional antennae tuned to the right frequency bands is well within the reach of even banana republics.


That's still just giving a different corporation the power to control communications


Thought you must be exaggerating but after reading further I’m shocked. I know the courts can be a tech illiterate but why are the Spanish courts this bad? Surely they see the consequences of the decision and immediately realise it’s stupid? The UK can be pretty bad with this stuff and the Premier League is huge but I have no concern of something this idiotic happening here.


Huh? I live in Spain and I've never had any issues with internet or any websites being cut off. I'm not sure when these matches are on though because I'm not interested in sports.

Spain does have a problem with the legal system though. Last year they almost cut off telegram and the government had to intervene.


Spain could build thier own cloudflare.


Crystallising his memory and mental processes


Wonder how making the world your enemy is going to pan out smh

Edit: “treating your allies like enemies”


If DDG is making any money, they should be investing it in creating their own independent index


That's really not trivial. But Europe is trying: https://blog.ecosia.org/eusp/


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