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The alternative to Starlink already existed before Starlink. I'm using it right now.
by ben_w 4mo ago
The alternative to Starlink already existed before Starlink. I'm using it right now.
- mmsimanga 4mo agoAfrican here living under and shit hole government who has no interest in improving the lives of the people. Starlink has been a game changer! An absolute game changer. I do not support Elon Musk but just putting out there that Starlink is helping kids in remote areas with no electricity (they use small solar panel) to access the Internet.
- JKCalhoun 4mo agoHopefully they don't part with books—the way kids in the U.S. have.
- JKCalhoun 4mo agoHopefully they don't part with books—the way kids in the U.S. have. Hopefully they don't spend all their free time on Tik Tok…
- mmsimanga 4mo agoMost people cannot afford to have it in their home. They will get access at school or shopping centre. Most kids don't have phones either but I really do get your point. The other danger is they tend to be susceptible to fake news and stories made up using AI. I have had cousins from the village send me a picture of a mermaid claiming she was caught in one of the rivers.
- ben_w 4mo ago> I have had cousins from the village send me a picture of a mermaid claiming she was caught in one of the rivers. For what it's worth, this also happens with printed books. I wasted the latter half of my teens taking New Age occultism and magical powers as a profound topic rather than a literature and culture topic, thanks to a combination of a bookstore chain near where I grew up and a mother who also took this all very seriously.
- JKCalhoun 4mo agoI wasn't suggesting that books are some kind of paragon of "truth". But as I think most HN readers would agree, there's just something… tangible about them that seems to stimulate the brain in a way that ephemeral images on a screen don't.
- moomoo11 4mo agowhat about being a better parent? i feel like all these problems people come up with stem from the fact they suck at parenting and have to project. i and most people i know don’t have these problems. we actually care, and our parents cared about us. when i was growing up it was kids who drank or smoked (we didn’t have smartphones). just avoid them. these days if kids are glued to the phone that’s the parents fault. bad parenting. take kids to the museum or get them to a classical show or something. if parents make excuses why they can’t, again L parents.
- digitaltrees 4mo agoThis reads like you aren’t a parent and haven’t experienced the effects of social and peer pressure. We don’t allow screen time but our kids cousins do. Where do you think watching you tube happens? Should we monitor every moment of their lives and ban them from going to their cousins house?
- digitaltrees 4mo agoA monopoly can do good in the world. I am glad this is beneficial to you. I worry, given the history of monopoly behavior, that it will flip to extreme rent seeking in the not distant future.
- inglor_cz 4mo agoIn some places. Starlink is a global phenomenon, good ISPs were at best a local phenomenon.
- freedomben 4mo agomy alternative was dial up or a 10 Mbps flaky wireless ISP. Is that what you're using right now?
- SoftTalker 4mo agoI remember when I first had 10Mbps at my desktop at work. It was amazing. I wonder how slow that would feel today?
- freedomben 4mo agoIt's pretty painful, and makes a lot of work from home impossible between meetings, image pulls, etc. Until starlink I had to do development on a cloud vm