On Thursday, October 1, 2020, 06:11:21 AM PDT, Zenaan Harkness <[email protected]> wrote: On Thu, Oct 01, 2020 at 03:54:26AM +0000, jim bell wrote:[snip] > >> What I believe I DID say, and what I will say again, is that Musk is > >> putting himself into a position where he could do a great deal of good for > >> libertarian causes, in part by bypassing governments' ability to censor or > >> cut off Internet access. > > > There's little to no connection between "libertarian causes" and > >"internet access". > > Then you have a poor imagination. Access to the Internet _IS_ a "libertarian > cause". The fact that nations such as India are selectiely obstructing its > people's access to the Internet should anger you immensely. Authoritarian > (and certainly totalitarian!) nations are merely the epitome of such > obstruction. Many people might not think mere "India" as being unfree, but > nevertheless it's a problem. ... [snip] >There are certain tasks before us in the realm of "modern communication", >including #OpenHW, #OpenFabs, seamless peer to peer mesh networks (ethernet >between neighbours, mobile phone wifis etc), and given a new properly >distributed (etc) overlay net, then there is no reason that some links cannot >go via Musk's Starlink satellites - just another rando hop in the mesh, with >its own characteristics (bandwidth, cost, latency, etc).
>There is no -inherent- reason to disclude any particular link type (although >yes, satellite-accessing nodes may be well require highly proprietary >equipment which ought be "firewalled" in some way, at least from the >immediate/ accessing/ paying user, we cannot say the situation is any better >with say the ubiquitous Intel ethernet hardware and firmware stack... pot meet >kettle). >Our primary hurdle in the medium term is hardware, since the software is, from >a design perspective afaict, mostly a solved problem ... proof by result still >pending of course :) Yes. Weeks ago, I concluded that Starlink was probably using a "phased-array" IC for the ground station, so that the beam could be electronically steered. (The same IC that is being used for the Walabot sophisticated 'stud-finder'. https://www.amazon.com/Walabot-Imager-Android-Smartphones-Compatible/dp/B06Y29NXKK ) This is important, because they don't want the outputs of millions of such devices to be simultaneously emitted in ALL directions. THAT is a major advance, and it makes what they are trying to do practical. Jim Bell
