The only real viable long-term business model for these constellations are for the military or other socialized use.
They are completely unprofitable otherwise. Eventually even Starlink will lose money, as more and more rural regions around the world are wired for fiber.
There really aren't that many people around the world that would make Starlink profitable in the long run. Only about 1% of the global population are farmers, so that already limits your market. And the moment a village is formed, the economics favor fiber to that village over Starlink.
I might be biased because I live in an area where it is fairly easy to find locations that don't have cellular coverage and won't have cellular coverage anytime soon.
Globally, there's a lot of places that are sparsely inhabited but too remote to warrant strong cellular connectivity. There's also a lot of "nooks and crannies" geographically that are not well served by cellular. As an example, I have a property in an area with excellent 5G coverage but my specific property is in a valley removing line of sight between me and the local tower, meaning reception is virtually nil. I can't even make a phone call. Without Starlink my only option would be to rely on a local WISP to set up some kind of repeater system that would have far lower reliability/performance and significantly higher cost.
Yes, but the question is what fraction of the population is in these niches and does that provide enough subscription revenue to fund the constellation?
If many others find a cheaper and more reliable path, the customer base collapses.
Well, my point is that these niches are probably more commonplace than people who live in areas blanketed by multiple 5G providers probably assume. I'm sure there are Starlink customers using it as an option in some interim period while they wait for fiber to be rolled out to their neighbourhood or town, but anecdotally, I don't know any Starlink customers who are in that boat. We exist in locations that will not be served by cheaper, more reliable terrestrial options anytime soon.
Even "cheaper" is quickly becoming a question mark. Starlink is offering 100mbps plans for $50-$70/mo. which in my region makes it cheaper or on par with options from cellular providers (which are capped) or options from cable/fiber providers.
>more and more rural regions around the world are wired for fiber.
Ecuador has the highest rate of cell phone ownership in the world, because they never built landlines and just went straight to wireless.
Same with electricity in many African countries -no grid, straight to local solar.
When I see comments like this it’s obvious you’re talking about West Virginia or Nevada as “rural regions around the world”
Go spend time in the Canadian arctic, the Congo, Sudan, Bolivia, Mongolia, Remote Australia and dozens and dozens more if you want to see where starlink shines and is rapidly changing the world.
Is North Korea really a "rogue nation" anymore? What does that even mean when the US, which is currently led by a convicted felon, is literally and unapologetically stealing resources from places like Venezuela and Iran?
If we wanted to treat words literally, the true rogue nation is USA. The only nation on earth to have actually dropped nukes on people. Have been prooved to spy on the entire world population. Plants coups around the globe. Invades any country they fancy in the name of democratization.
This is a really huge and a fundamental flaw in AI-driven design. AI-driven design is completely inconsistent. If you re-ran an AI generated layout, even with the same prompt, the output for a user interface will look completely different between two runs.
You definitely need to filter if you use AI. Looking at all the vibe-coded creations that are showing up these days has changed my mind from "AI-generated code is bad" to "the one using the AI is doing a bad job of it".
I ended up writing a linter/validator that checks the AI-generated code for everything, including user interface style guidelines and preferences (not necessarily for hard errors)
Nope, that would take congressional approval and congressional leaders are all bought by the people that paid for the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996. At this point only DoD and CIA can make it happen, thus why I mention any of this.
Yah my Claude Code agents run a ton of Python and bash scripts. You're probably missing out on a lot of tool use cases without full tool use through POSIX compatibility.
A lot of government would be improved by making elected positions be very specific roles.
Why are we deciding military strategy from a guy that was elected to fix labor rights? Should the same guy running the school system also be in charge of selecting Supreme Court justices?
Also, the founding fathers had it right: An independent electoral college should decide elected positions, not the general public. Hiring decisions should be left up to people that are expert at hiring, not random people.
The only role the general public should have in government is deciding their representative - it's literally in the name!
And executive branch isn't supposed to be a representative. It's only role is to execute laws created by the representatives.
> he vast majority of people trust the Iranian government
Right... Nobody sane would trust an authoritarian regime which suppresses any type of free speech and and even banned the internet regardless of everything else.
Mistrusting Israel is understandable but that seems tangential.
I don't think I have the skillset and personality that would me allow to rise to the top of the hierarchy in a brutal totalitarian regime built on religious fanaticism. So no I would not do that.
> armed insurrectionists
Unfortunately not even remotely armed enough to make a difference...
> War changes rules of a country.
Oh so the Iranian regime was not murdering its own peacefully protesting citizens (regardless of the existence of these "armed insurrectionists") for many years now?
>I don't think I have the skillset and personality that would me allow to rise to the top of the hierarchy in a brutal totalitarian regime built on religious fanaticism.
This is about whether you would shut down the internet or not, not whether you would rise to the top of the hierarchy on a brutal totalitarian regime built on religious fanaticism... like Israel. You know, a country with strict limits on media, including shutting down media outlets it deems critical of the state.
Yes, you would shut down the internet in a war. Yes, specifically you. Just like how you would just down media companies and plane flights in wartime, since you, yes you specifically, do not believe in Democracy.
>Oh so the Iranian regime was not murdering its own peacefully protesting citizens (regardless of the existence of these "armed insurrectionists") for many years now?
So then for how many years do you think Mossad armed the insurrectionists that you are trying to call "peaceful protesters"?
"Brutal apartheid state"? Well perhaps... certainly not a totalitarian regime, though.
> many years do you think Mossad armed the insurrectionists
Sadly and unfortunately either not long enough and/or didn't provide them with enough weapons. But yeah I agree with your sentiment that Mossad should have done a much better job if they were serious about overthrowing the regime.
Great. Glad you agree that it was Mossad that was responsible for all the civilian deaths during the violent Iranian insurrection, and not the Iranian government.
I think we can all agree that the Iranian government are the good guys and the Israeli regime are the bad guys. That's not in dispute. What IS in dispute is how we work together on removing the Israeli government. I think we should support the Iranian government, since they are already well on their in the process of removing the Israeli regime from power and replacing them with the good Hamas government.
> It’s a comparison with Israel rather than a stand alone statement
Yes, I understood that and still it makes no sense to me, I mean extremely untrustworthy and very untrustworthy seems about the same since you can't trust anything either source says.
Israel at least have a free(ish) media and is less likely to hang someone leaking information from a construction crane.
This completely insane and sounds like Iranian propaganda. You can hate Israel but spreading propaganda is really terrible. You find it hard to believe that the regime that hangs women from a crane in the square for not wearing the hijab would not do this? There are videos of IRGC shooting into crowds and apartments but your view is just “Israel Bad”. Be seious. You can be against the war and still live in reality with everyone else.
That is not an argument, it is just weaseling. What did I make up? The great governor of California is a democrat and part of the Getty fortune. Perhaps you will believe them?
I honestly do see Trump just declaring he lost. "These Iranians put up a good fight and we weren't prepared." or something to that effect. He's been known to acknowledge defeat, like his complete 180 when Mamdani won.
Can we set up a bet on Polymarket or something? I'll take that action any day. He would have to phrase such an acknowledgement as an apology, and a Trump doesn't do that. Ever.
He didn't directly acknowledge defeat with Mamdani, at least not that I heard. It was more a case of populist game recognizing populist game.
They are completely unprofitable otherwise. Eventually even Starlink will lose money, as more and more rural regions around the world are wired for fiber.
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