Very cute. I’d love to hold my gecko like this, but she is a cranky old lady.

Ah, so you wouldn’t recommend that someone buy one of these things as a daily driver? You only have the truck for doing truck stuff, right?

Yeah, because you’re in a big truck, and not a sensibly sized car getting pinched between a brodozer and a concrete barrier everyday.

Everyone I know uses them pretty consistently to tow.

Is even softer data than what I posted, and softer than the old survey you were complaining about.

There’s 2 F series trucks for every square mile of this country. Do you think they are all out there hauling loads and trailers, off roading and actualling being used for truck stuff, or do you think that the vast majority of them are single occupant highway battering rams built to make small men feel big and important?

Remember, 2 per square mile, and that just one series of trucks, from 1 manufacturer, going back just 10 years.

In the absence of hard statistics, I think a gut check on the sheer scale of trucks being sold in the US will suffice.

It’s easier more profitable to make a larger footprint the consumer buy a larger vehicle than a more efficient vehicle.

Minor fixes, spot on otherwise.

People have had success emailing and asking for the name of the person that denyed your MRI so that you can either sue them for malpractice, or so you can sue them for practicing medicine without a license.

Solar still, or a transpiration bag.

Les Stroud said that the one thing he can count on in every survival situation, is finding trash.

To be fair to Von Braun, he did have slaves build his rockets.

Hell yes.

Every year, we should take the richest person in the country and redistribute half their assets.

Also, if you use unrealized assets as collateral for a loan, you should be taxed on the value of those assets.

We are talking about Starlink here, correct? Owned by Elon

No, we are talking about how hard of a target a satellite based network is vs a terrestrial fiber network. Starlink is being used purely as an example here, but is by no means a complete representation of all aspects of the technology.

That said, all satellite networks are subject to dying if their ground-stations are taken offline…

Yes, but they can route traffic between satellites and back down to working ground stations. Theoretically, one working ground station could keep the satellite network connected to the entire Internet. Hence why Starlink still works over Ukraine, and why it is such a big deal when Elon shuts it off.

Sure, that’s a fault of Elon though, not a fault of satellite networks.

It’s always the same answer.

Why aren’t people having kids any more?

Why aren’t people going to bars anymore?

Why don’t people want to work anymore?

Because 8 lazy lucky fuckers own 50% of everything that we’ve built.

This reminds me of Bender putting his arms back on.

Still works over Ukraine somehow… Maybe that fancy satellite network just carries it to the next available ground station?

To put into scale how wrong you are about taking out a satellite, the last satellite the US shot down was in 2008, and it took a specially modified 9 million dollar missile to shoot it down. A Starlink satellite with launch costs included is just under 2 million dollars. Not only is it technologically difficult to take out a satellite, but it’s much more costly to shoot them down than it is to put them up.

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

It’s not a trivial thing to take out a single satellite, let alone a whole constellation of satellites.

You literally could not be more wrong about this.

…Russia bombed their power plants, all the cabling, and it was a literal war zone.

Here you are acknowledge that ground-based systems are very vulnerable to attack. Guess what still works in Ukraine right now (or at least when Elon allows it to work). You got it. Starlink.

How about another comparison. Starlink has a full project estimated cost of ~10 billion dollars, that’s with launches and satellites. The estimated cost to rebuild Ukraine’s telecom network is 4.7 billion dollars, and that is just for the damaged infrastructure in Ukraine. Starlink has already generated 72 million in profit (not revenue, but profit!)

We gave telecom providers 200 billion in tax breaks to build a fiber network in the US, and they didn’t even finish the job. 20x what Starlink’s estimated cost is.

Serioualy, the scale of how wrong you are about all of this is staggering.

Alright. Let’s clear this up.

Are satellite links easier to take down than a fiber link? No. It takes specialized weapons manfactured by state level actors to take out a a single satellite, let alone a whole constellation. I can take a pair of wire clippers, and take out every cable link in my neighborhood in a afternoon. Russia fairly regularly sabotages undersea cables just by “accidentally” dragging an anchor over them.

Is Starlink funded partially by public money? Absolutely yes, along with every other telecom provider. Hell, we gave them the public TV bands as compensation for builfijg a public fiber network (which they never even fucking did!)

Do Starlink satellite need to be replaced at extreme cost? Yes, but so does terresrrial network infrastructure. There is a reason why your internet isn’t 12kbps anymore… As far as the cost goes, the consumers determine if the cost is worth the benefit, and so far the answer is ‘yes’.

Ever wonder why Ukraine was using Starlink for network connections in the first place? Maybe it’s becuse the vulnerable terrestrial based networks were damaged or taken out of service months ago, and you can’t exactly get a contractor to go into a warzone and lay down new cables.

Your points, that satellites based networks are more vulnerable and prohibitively expensive is simply not compatible with reality.

I’m well aware of those issues as well, which is why I’m not pro-starlink replacing all terrestrial networks.

It is simply harder to sabotage if the wires are underground and cannot be readily seen by hostile actors.

This statement is not correct. It is the topic being discussed. Fiber network are more vulnerable than satellite networks. It takes specialized weapons to take out a single satellite link. Any idiot with wire clippers can take out a fiber link, and it happens all the time. Fiber networks are more difficult to replace at scale than a satellite network, and individuals links are more important to fiber network than they are to satellite networks.

No. That’s not what I said. Please stop trying to frame this like I am pro-starlink. I’m not.