Wouldn't it be better if more local people were subscribed to StarLink to begin with?
People like you literally cannot be happy about anything. Good grief.
I mean, Comcast and Xfinity will probably not go down the next time this happens, right? At worse this is nice gesture that will result in a slight market correction and better outcomes for all next time.
Appalachia has some of the highest poverty rates in the country. They don't have money for food, let alone a $120/month service that they can get for cheaper via cellular data or conventional ISP
At worse this is a non-gesture. For the actual relief effort itself, those travelling to do rescue - starlink has its use cases (as would a satellite and sat phones, but starlink does somewhat shine for first responder use cases)
Asteroid stated earlier: "At worse this is nice gesture "
I mostly wanted to correct that to say at worse it is a non gesture. Somewhat helping a couple hundred people out of a million plus, is not quite the "nice" gesture. Particularly a relatively poor population. IDK, a pedantic debate of "nice and meaningful" vs "nice but not significant" is not interesting. Non-gesture I would equate to the latter. It is not like 10k of these devices were rushed in, fully activated, on the second day when it would have counted most.
The help here is now coming late. 5 days ago (Monday) and this would have been much more helpful. To boot, just "first month free"
Which is my same response when you say someone, yeah that is some people. Not many, does not really move the needle as much as it could. Though, for those where this first month free was helpful - that is great. Except overall, "first month free" is not really a gamechanger for the significant population on the ground. Find specific evidence otherwise if you want to make that claim. I'll be in the area in a week or two, I'll ask about this.
> This is concern trolling at best
Concern trolling vs savior complex.. The quality of this dialogue is now severely degraded after this insult.
My family is in western NC not far outside of Asheville. Town of 100k. For _all_ of them, this "gesture" is meaningless since both factors of cell phone coverage and money are at play. Cell phone coverage (for SMS) came back online last sunday, and they reported to me a lot of people are badly off because the end of month paycheck was not soon enough and those people could not buy supplies in preparation.
I do not know where you are located. I have the impression this forum is dominated by people that don't understand how poor rural parts of the country can be. Appalachia is one of the very poor parts of the country. Poverty rates in western NC are typically 15 to 20% [1]. Per capita income in appalachia is roughly $40k [2] (consider the implications for the distribution). About 1.2M people [3] in western NC, with 200k of them unable to even buy food. As far as pre-existing deployments, $300 for a starlink and $120/month is way out of the question.
I don't see the numbers working out where a "first month is free", even with the device being donated as all that terribly useful en masse here.
Though, in fairness, I do see utility to have a starlink on the back of a pickup truck with a bunch of supplies heading into a small, cut-off, town of 100 and then coordinating further relief effort. At the same time, supplies and evac are more priority. Which is to say, the use case where I think this shines is for emergency workers. Again, first month free is meaningless there.
Worst case, yeah - essentially a non-gesture (worst case)
The devices were in immediately the storm passed. Not X days later. The people who brought them in are the ones who asked for it because they have activation issues.
The world and Asheville doesn't exist only for you. And as I've pointed out a lot of those towers are backhauled over starlink. They could very well have received those texts over it before fiber was restored.
Even today, days later, there's people asking for starlink to be delivered because x town is down
> The devices were in immediately the storm passed
Fema currently only has 40 in. (Citation in another comment, kindly take my word for it). Do you know how many immediately afterwards, any data or evidence? Even wild ass guess?
> The world and Asheville doesn't exist only for you.
This sounds like your own bias and frustration and assumptions. I'll respond to the insult by asking we calm down and have dialogue. This is not twitter.
> a lot of those towers are backhauled over starlink.
Do you have more information on this? How many? Which ones? Do I have starlink to thank for enabling SMS to waynesville?
> They could very well have received those texts over it before fiber was restored.
We have videos of several people who were there the next day with Starlink. Their names are in this thread. They are the ones that had activation issues. It's not expensive and they also brought power. They met the actual first responders who lost access to firstnet
More than 40 is my guess. Understand that these are individuals. No link to charities or organizations. Just people going in on their own.
In every disaster, mobile providers bring in tower on wheels. Starlink is the cheapest provider.
Lots of cell towers these days don't have microwave. If you only get calls/SMS on a tower these days you've definitely lost your fiber connectivity. With connectivity over SATCOM or even another 4G network. i.e a hotspot.
If you find recent documents about TOW's you'll see you can lease one and they mention you have to bring your own starlink. When they tell you how much alternatives cost you'll be happy to go with it.
Asteroid stated earlier: "At worse this is nice gesture "
I mostly wanted to correct that to say at worse it is a non gesture. Somewhat helping a couple hundred people out of a million plus, is not quite the "nice" gesture.
Yeah no correction needed here buddy - I get it you have anti-Elon syndrome and anything any of his companies do are bad, and you have decided to use your intellectual prowess to delude yourself into this conclusion regardless of facts.
These devices are not even being setup by the locals, and no one is forcing them to buy into the ecosystem. The FIRST RESPONDERS REQUESTED THIS CHANGE, because they are bringing them on the ground with them. They successfully removed a hurdle which was preventing them from a rapid rescue effort. The fact you are willing to cast that as some sort of evil advertising campaign to hook them on hardware they can't afford is perhaps one of the dumbest things I have read here -- and apparently quite a few people here are influenceable enough to fall for this nonsense.
How you can manage to be so upset that they removed the device activation hurdle is beyond me -- but I'll go ahead and judge this situation based on the facts on the ground not my pre-conceived decision about a companies motives.
How poor appalachia is entirely irrelevant, the people aren't helicoptering out to bring StarLinks back to trick the community into getting locked into hardware. First responders had trouble activating and responding and made a direct request, which was granted for humanitarian reasons whether you like the company or not.
The fact that you are letting your biases cloud your judgement and drive absurd villain arcs is clear for everyone to see, and I for sure don't need you 'correcting' me (you also spelled my name wrong btw).
You are calling out other people for polluting the dialog by accurately calling you out, and in the same breath claiming this is really about Elon's savior complex. Maybe if you stop letting Elon live in your head rent free, you can make room for some nuance and critical thinking. Every claim you made here is based on a complete misrepresentation of the facts.
Not accepting claims is different from anti elon bias. You say X is good or bad, my response is prove it. You say X is meaningful, I have the same response. That is not being upset, it is being skeptical.
With that said, I now concede there is more than marginal utility happening and I've done the numbers in sibling comments. The fact I've evolved my opinion based on further information I think makes most of your screed moot.
> The FIRST RESPONDERS REQUESTED THIS CHANGE,
Are you referring to FEMA? Since there is at least one cajun navy style person who requested this that I am aware of, I would largely agree.
My contention is whether any of this actually all that meaningful. For that, I'm not going to assume it. Which was my initial position.
> and I for sure don't need you 'correcting' me
My apologies. I am stuck on a phone and my diligence is not what I would like it to be. Rather than "correcting", I was disagreeing with you (pending more information). I should have said something more like: without yet seeing the full numbers of how much this helping, I am not sure whether this is worst case even more than a non gesture. Since you wrote "worst case", my initial thought is the "worst case" was even lower on the spectrum than "nice:
> Every claim you made here is based on a complete misrepresentation of the facts.
Every claim?? Can you give a few examples? This feels like hyperbole.
Though, I try not to make unsupported claims. It would be a useful learning to me to know which claims I positively made without facts. (Please keep in mind not accepting claims is very different from putting forward a claim - perhaps you are conflating the two?? If not, I'm happy to apologize and retract any unsupported claims.)
"You say X is good or bad, my response is provd it. You say X is meaningful, I have the same response." - No I didn't. Your bias is showing again.
"Are you referring to FEMA? Since there is at least one cajun navy style person who requested this that I am aware of, I would largely agree."
No - I am referring to the on the ground actual FIRST responders who were there helping immediately (and continue to volunteer their time, money, and skills) -- not the government agency that came in after.
Are the only first responders that matter FEMA? Is this supposed to be some kind of logical fallacy gotcha like "OOOHHHHHHhhhhhh that dude that bought 50 StarLinks on his own credit card and hauled them out to those in need is actually SECOND to respond, doesn't matter if FEMA didn't help those people yet FEMA First, FEMA best."
I know off-hand of a handful of volunteers that got over a hundred terminals out -- that could easily make a tangible difference for 1,000s of people alone. I'm sure there are many many more I don't have direct knowledge of.
You literally just fake quoted things I never said, misconstrued what I did say, laid out several logical traps, and somehow smugly think that everyone does not see through you.
"Every claim?"
Yep.
Will I continue to dissect your disingenuous points? Nope, my time is more valuable than yours - and it's clear you have no problem pissing yours away to waste mine.
Yeah no thanks, I will patiently await your totally non-biased post-mortem-analysis of the data. Until then I have nothing more to say other than I feel sorry for you.
I was curious about this and triple checked. Some claims had citations. Therefore at least some were supported.
I wrote:
> Somewhat helping a couple hundred people out of a million plus, is not quite the "nice" gesture.
I understand a bit more the disconnect now. I did not write carefully that I meant that as a hypothetical, in the context of an "at worst." As a claim, I would agree it is unsupported. And I agree it can reasonably read that way. I can see how that would bias the reading of the rest of the content.
> that dude that bought 50 StarLinks on his own credit card and hauled them out to those in need
Is that a real example? I'm willing to take your word for it. I don't read twitter nor reddit. Those types of anecdotes are not reported on from the sources I read.
Which is to say, you genuinely have some info I don't have. No logical traps. I am learning more about the scale and utility of starlink. Anecdotes do not make data, at the same time I appreciate the info. I do wish you could unbias the conversation, make it about ideas and data, and not make this personal.
Wow.. what did I fake quote? What claims were unsupported?
My question to you whether you were talking about FEMA or civilians was a QUESTION!! It was not a logical trap. I wanted to understand what you were saying better. That you ranted about it, put words into my mouth - does not bode well. It was a clarifying question. I don't need you feeling anything about me just as much as you don't need correcting. I do think you are reading way more into what I'm writing, and are conflating the lack of accepting your claims with making those of my own. If you can clarify, it would be helpful. Otherwise calm down since the personal attacks are not in the spirit of this discussion board.
This is the last thing I am going to say to you, after twice now I have told you I am done with this conversation. There is absolutely nothing further to discuss between us, but I want to make this point abundantly clear for anyone who is clicking 'expand' on all of your downvoted comments:
"Is that a real example?"
Yes. It was one of the people who were specifically asking that this action be taken, after they cleaned out all of their local home depots and drove them out there and was having trouble with activation.
That is just one person out of many who are trying to help, while you spend hours hovering in this thread looking to use your carefully crafted but incredibly transparent attempt to look very 'logical' and 'unbiased' as a cudgel, while you attempt to de-legitimize and minimize their efforts.
Again, I feel sorry for you and hope you find peace within yourself (or at least go back to reddit).
> There is absolutely nothing further to discuss between us
I would agree it is better ended.
> I want to make this point abundantly clear for anyone who is clicking 'expand' on all of your downvoted comments
In a similar vein, you did not identify any fake quotes that you accused me of, nor identified any unsupported claims (though I concede you could have identified one, which was poorly written and reasonably could have been considered a claim)
> "Is that a real example?" Yes.
That is excellent. Quite cool.
> That is just one person out of many who are trying to help, while you spend hours hovering in this thread
I am in a hotel right now. Staging and waiting to go in. My presence is not going to be a net benefit right now compared to my own resource usage. I'm going to be in western NC in a few days. FWIW
> looking to use your carefully crafted but incredibly transparent attempt to look very 'logical' and 'unbiased' as a cudgel
If it looks that way, and I never brought out the cudgel, how do you know it was dishonest and not just questions? I even agreed with and asked if you were talking about citizens or FEMA. You then went off accusing me of laying some trap and all these other things (after I _agreed_ with you!) You further accused me of saying civilians could not be first responders, a diatribe that put your words into my mouth.
> while you attempt to de-legitimize and minimize their efforts.
Respectfully, you read that in. You attributed motive. I am not a random person on Twitter or reddit just trying to dunk on you.
I did not accept, at first read, that "first month free" was significant. I see how it is more so now. (And you accused me of extreme anti-Musk bias, to which is disproven when I say following everything I have changed my perspective. I see how first month free is helpful and supported a significant assistance, of which starlink was a very notable part).
Yet, questioning "first month free", does not delegitimize what people are doing. It is skepticism.
> hope you find peace within yourself
FWIW. I am okay with all of this convo and have never been upset. Annoyed and disappointed perhaps, but not upset. I might not have clearly conveyed everything I wanted to, but my questions were honest questions here. Not logic traps.
> (or at least go back to reddit).
Ironic since I don't read reddit, and never once started an X (twitter) account. This is why I was pointing out and reminding you to avoid personal attacks & shallow dismissals (per the discussion guidelines). The guidelines say as conversations go on, they should get more interesting. Which is why I asked you to point out unsupported claims so you could illustrate why (and give more information, and add context and light). Instead you tellingly refused to point anything out, resorted to incorrect hyperbole and personal attacks. I feel that was about half of what you wrote in the end.
I don't want to close on that. I did find 50% of what you had to say to be informative and genuinely interesting and did cure me of some ignorance (and i feel this would have been a very good convo had we been able to stick to that.)
I can concisely now say that all along I have only been asking: "is this useful?" I would postulate, for the starlink and month free to be useful the following are needed: (A) access to the device, (B) ability to pay (C) meaningful numbers deployed (D) no other alternatives (ie: existing conventional means)
We hashed out A, B, D already. C is difficult to know, perhaps only SpaceX can answer. Counting twitter responses can give us a minimum, but that is only so useful.
This response from Astroid I think exemplifies how this conversation went off the rails:
> How poor appalachia is entirely irrelevant, the people aren't helicoptering out to bring StarLinks back to trick the community into getting locked into hardware.
This is an example of arguing against an imagined conversation. Who is able, and how they are paying for the devices is important - otherwise they are not useful. The suggestion that I am instead implying a nefarious motive to get device lock in is imagined. That was not this conversation. A case study of what it looks like when people are talking at each other and not to each other.
More than whatever FEMA is providing. I've seen video of single people with more dishes than FEMA claimed.
This is access at central locations where people gather. Retail stores, homes, government agencies like Police and fire, County Offices etc
It's free at the point of use to residents so questions about paying are words in wind.
This devices are for the use of first responders and temporary access for local residents. By first responders I don't mean government, not even State/Local.
They already had dishes, before FEMA was there, before the cell providers were there, before any SpaceX intervention. and today there's still people without access to communications. Towers still gone, wired services out. And more starlink dishes coming in. There's flooded towns officially out of the disaster area where both FEMA and SpaceX aren't.
For many people in the region, starlink dishes whether directly, on towers, or on cells on wheels or some other SATCOM provider was the first time they were able to communicate post disaster.
> For many people in the region, starlink dishes whether directly, on towers, or on cells on wheels or some other SATCOM provider was the first time they were able to communicate post disaster.
Re C: "Many" is not a specific number nor an estimate of magnitude. "I don't know" is fine. Nonetheless, more than zero, is still great.
Re: first time. I find it odd to say that, since whomever brought the device in would have been the first communication.
I've been on the ground for a week now. The utility of starlink is niche. Albeit, a useful niche. Is it someone's home not being flooded and all of their possessions not dumped across the street? No. Is it baby formula that is now badly needed, no. Hence, niche.
My thoughts are now this whole thread/news "article" is hacker news clickbait. The only discussion needed here were really just two words, 'okay, great.' That and, donate to the red cross, BeLoved Asheville, or any church in western NC.
This topic I believe started on twitter, I wish it stayed there. I am biased against technophilia, and wish data and facts could rule the day. That and I've learned to be skeptical of any claim, and technophilia is full of fanciful ckaims without evidence.
I spent the day today pulling soaked insulation out of a home. They are going to be cold this winter, lost everything. The river nearby rose by 29 feet. That was just one home amongst many.
You can see the offer been extended and how much it's helping here.
But as I pointed to someone else, 300 days and a free dish would still bring complaints. I've seen someone already saying 80 days is nothing. The same person would still tell you Starlink is unviable. You can't win so don't play these games
> SpaceX can't do everything for everyone. But they will do what they will.
This underscores two points I think. The first, the question of whether starlink was anything. The second point, context. At a point, a can opener is literally more valuable. The larger context, so many people have lost everything, there are many dead. Though, starlink and free service is very far from nothing too! (Read on, I'm not at all hating on starlink)
> You can see the offer been extended and how much it's helping here.
That is great. I was wondering again a bit about the monthly cost now that we are closing in on the first month.
FWIW, starlinks are now on BeLoved Ashevilles requested items list. [1] I'm not sure when it appeared. Other requested items lists I had seen did not have it (those lists did have can openers as a top requested along with baby diapers and formula)
> I've seen someone already saying 80 days is nothing
That does seem myopic IMO. Though, the recovery is going to be many months. Context is key IMO. There are lots of really significant needs. I personally think the technophiles forget that there is more to life than internet, a lot more. That is just my 2 cents. At the same time, yeah, the utility is there. It is hard to know though objectively to what extent.
On the other side, there are so many needs. Many homes that need to be dried before they mold, many that need repair, electricity back, roads fixed, many homes need demo and rebuild. All help is needed, this is an all hands on deck situation.
> The same person would still tell you Starlink is unviable.
I would wonder unviable for what? As a bridge for normal services, for some specific cases it seems like it is very much proving itself. The listing on BeLoved Asheville says a lot too.
I do wonder about long term payment, though it could be moot as in part the highest utility so far is as a bridge pending normal services. Getting past the most acute phase will take more time. The offer extended until the end of the year should go a long way.
> You can't win so don't play these games
Sigh. Asking, "is this objectively useful, and to what extent?" should have been a somewhat straight forward question and answer.
It is not about winning. Just info and keeping things in context. Is starlink the best thing since sliced toast? Maybe (proof needed) Is it single handedly saving the entirety of NC? Clearly not, it cannot since it is just one need of many. Does it have its demonstrated uses? Yes.
Re: winning. I'm on track to have delivered 4000 diapers, 50lbs of food, $500 worth of PPE, and manual labor to hard hit areas. Recovery is important, that is what matters. That is as close to "winning" as I'll get (and I get to come home to power, water, and my stuff - the people in need get none of those right now). There is no "winning" here.
Being skeptical of a claim and asking that the proof be shown, and seeing some of that - is illumination. It is neither winning nor losing. Again, so much of this seems to be hacker news clickbait. The discussion also very Twitter-esque. My impression is twitter is about "winning" and then dunking. Hence, viewpoints are assumed. Eg: 'Oh, this sounds like Y, therefore they must also believe Z too'
Coming back to it, there's hundreds of thousands impacted (AFAIK), with hundreds of different needs. Starlink is seemingly objectively helpful, it is a piece of the overall picture. The free service needed context to be better understood why that was helpful.
But, technology has its role and does help some things. Perspective. Finding places with clean water, phone charging, that is internet facilitated [2] and starlink has an obvious role there. Yet, technology (specifically internet) does not solve all problems - for some things you simply need four walls, a roof, a hammer, a neighbor, and a can opener.
Please donate to red cross or BeLoved Asheville if you can.
[2] Source is my recollection. Somewhere on beloved asheville I think they had maps of such things. I recall seeing FB posts helping direct people to such places as well.
Re: "This devices are for the use of first responders and temporary access for local residents. By first responders I don't mean government, not even State/Local."
Are we talking in circles? Very early on, I already wrote (is there an important distinction I'm missing?):
> Though, in fairness, I do see utility to have a starlink on the back of a pickup truck with a bunch of supplies heading into a small, cut-off, town of 100 and then coordinating further relief effort. At the same time, supplies and evac are more priority. Which is to say, the use case where I think this shines is for emergency workers.
Oh wow quite the own. You really did something there.
Do you mind demonstrating how you can unpackage the device and connect straight to the internet without going through the activation hurdles?
If not, this is the most irrelevant piece of information you could possibly use to make your misguided point.
First responders on their own volition brought StarLink terminals on site, which REQUIRE ACTIVATION regardless of the 30 days free. This activation effort was getting in the way of rescue efforts, likely due to credit card processors being wary of gift cards. They literally couldn't connect due to this barrier (which has since been removed).
They removed the activation wall, and now anyone with a dish in the vicinity can connect. Do you see how that is different than buying a dish, taking it home, activating it in a safe area with an active credit card that the processor approves? And can you fathom a situation where maybe removing that activation wall will do tangible good?
How can you possibly not see the difference here?
Why don't you go pick up a StarLink kit, take it home and try to connect to the internet without activating it first - then come back when you have an understanding of what you are trying to explain to those who actually have used the things. Or sell your elite hax0r 0day on the dark-web for big money if you succeed.
You can even cost "StarLink" or whatever evil company dared offer their gear a restocking fee when you return it out of malice or frustration.
It should be a win-win if you want to stand on that point.
Calm down Astroid please. You make good points, except the vitriol is very noisy. You can make those same points in half the text and without being mean.
Well right now if you happen to have a receiver and turn it on it will work for 30 days out of the box. Before this is was 1 hour before requiring activation
People like you literally cannot be happy about anything. Good grief.
I mean, Comcast and Xfinity will probably not go down the next time this happens, right? At worse this is nice gesture that will result in a slight market correction and better outcomes for all next time.