I'm actually a huge fan of "unlimited slow speeds" as a falloff, instead of a cliff.<p>Aside from the fact it allows you to work with Starlink to buy more fast speed, it also allows core stuff to continue to function (e.g. basic notifications, non-streaming web traffic, etc).
> I'm actually a huge fan of "unlimited slow speeds" as a falloff, instead of a cliff.<p>When on cellular, I like to call that "HN-only mode." It is one of the few web properties that is entirely usable at 2G speeds.
I would kill for a web renaissance to return to this format of webpages, as least as an option. Not only loading improves, but also navigation and accessibility.
Indeed. That's why, when they finally kill old.reddit, I may legitimately stop using it entirely. They've already banned most of the good apps, forcing the pretty terrible official one.
New reddit is a travesty. It feels a satirical mockery of modern webdev
I've got a pet theory that old.reddit is actually codified in legal language somewhere as "must always exist."<p>Otherwise, I can't believe Reddit is actually keeping it around out of the goodness in their cold, dead corporate heart.
RedReader is a lovely, lightweight Android app for Reddit.<p>Development is slow, but I've been happily using it since RiF was killed.
Recently the old reddit szopped working for me even after going to account settings and opting out of new design again (it was already marked as being opt out) across all my devices. Even after manually navigating to old.reddit.com, clicking any link would take me to new again. I had to install special extensions to reroute to old reddit everywhere.
Same thing happened to me, this fixed it: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/1odehgj/is_old_reddit_finally_gone_for_good/nktgagu/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/1odehgj/is_old_reddit...</a>
Had that happen a few times but switching the use old reddit box off and back on fixes it.
CBC News has a lite version of their news site that they tend to promote around times of natural disaster.<p>(1) <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/lite/news" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbc.ca/lite/news</a>
CNN: <a href="https://lite.cnn.com/" rel="nofollow">https://lite.cnn.com/</a>
NPR has one too: <a href="https://text.npr.org" rel="nofollow">https://text.npr.org</a>
The dutch news (NOS) has their Teletext available via ssh on teletekst.nl.<p>no lite version as far as I know.
> but also navigation and accessibility<p>Counterpoint, HN is notoriously hard to use on mobile (still better than some, but it's clearly designed for desktop, and not super responsive).<p>But agreed, that's independent of the slim nature of the webpage (which is still possible with a good mobile UX).
I've found HN pretty easy to use with both Chrome and Firefox on Android, at default zoom, with my own pocket supercomputer.<p>Sometimes I manage to hit the updoot or downdoot buttons incorrectly, but that error happens so rarely that I'm amazed at my success.<p>Responsiveness is very good, as well. Loading is lightning quick in all but the very worst network environments.<p>It's not perfect by any means (the text box I'm writing this into really should be resizeable, for instance), but it's not bad at all...for me.
I dont get this. HN is probably one of the easiest sites i regularly use on mobile.
I find it works perfectly on Safari on iPhone.
> Counterpoint, HN is notoriously hard to use on mobile<p>No it's not, it's perfect on Vanadium with the zoom set to 125%. Much better than some bloated Javascript monstrosity.
It's very frustrating whenever this topic comes up that people see no middle ground between "the website as it is right now" and "some bloated JavaScript monstrosity". There is lots of room for improvement that would not turn it into "a bloated JavaScript monstrosity". How about bigger touch targets? Half the time when I go to vote on a comment on mobile I vote in the wrong direction and have to undo it. Same goes for using the search feature: I constantly fat-finger the drop-down search options on mobile.<p>Even though I usually prefer mobile websites to apps, most of the time for HN I browse using Octal instead of the website because the website is such a pain. And it wouldn't take very much to make it better, which makes it so annoying that people have knee-jerk anger to the prospect every time the subject comes up.
> How about bigger touch targets?<p>And lose even more precious space for reading? No thanks. Zoom in before you vote if it's a problem for you. You might say "how about drag up/down?" but then you can't scroll reliably on the page.
There's all this blank space to the left of the comment. Some of that could be used for bigger arrows.<p>Or some of the buttons on a comment could be hidden until you tap the comment. (And you can do it in CSS if div toggle is an offensive amount of javascript.)<p>There are some low-hanging fruit that would make the experience better. It's fine but it's not great.
The Octal app has better touch targets on mobile <i>and</i> manages to show more text at the same time. Here’s a pair of screenshots from my iPhone of the top of the “Is Rust Faster than C” comments. [0] is mobile Safari, [1] is Octal. The app shows more text.<p>This is exactly what makes me nuts about this whole debate: the complete lack of empiricism or nuance. People would rather just have their knee-jerk outrage about JavaScript or web design fads, instead of actually checking whether the things they’re saying are true.<p>[0]: <a href="https://imgur.com/a/aOvLFcM" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/a/aOvLFcM</a><p>[1]: <a href="https://imgur.com/a/7R14m4d" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/a/7R14m4d</a>
The font is bigger in your first example, the text uses twice the space (or your screenshots are different resolutions?). I greatly prefer it because it's easier to read. You could zoom out if you want, I guess.<p>But you could move the arrows to be to the right of the [-] and space them out a bit, sure, so they're easier to touch.
Anything that would introduce any amount of unneeded Javascript would make HN worse. It's the cancer of the modern Web. The current design shows that it isn't needed at all.
I'm using the "Glider" app for Android to access HN and its pretty awesome
Agreed. To upvote I often zoom out to make sure I tap the upvote botton and no the downvote one!
Maybe someone can build a service that translates webpages into "reader mode" format, which you can then consume on mobile devices with low bitrates.
That's effectively what Opera Mini did. (And apparently still does, I had no idea it was still functional.)
This is a pretty promising vector for man in the middle attacks.
So is Manifest v2 ad blocking and plenty of people are screaming about killing that one.<p>For a proper HN technical-solutions-only response, have the rewrite functionality reside in a WASM module cached locally and run in the browser, with a transparency ledger proving everyone sees the same WASM modules. This way any MitM attempts by the service are reproducible and undeniable.
v2 is not a MitM concern (but it is a malicious code concern). Before quibbling about this consider that if v2 qualifies as a MitM concern then pretty much every other piece of software also does. That isn't in keeping with the spirit of the term.<p>The outrage is threefold, because there is no viable alternative, because it infantilizes users, trampling their agency, and because it clearly serves corporate interests at the expense of the user.<p>As to your proposed solution - the rewriting needs to happen on a separate device in order to avoid pushing extra data across the network. If you're already self hosting that service then there's no need for a transparency ledger.
It's auto updating JavaScript maintained by some unknown that can rewrite html on any page, how is that not an MitM risk?<p>The html itself is rarely a lot of data, most things in this space remove or resize images etc.
If only we could make that conducive to resume-driven development for web developers.
NoScript gets you part way there.
One more realistic option could
be to have an "LLM browsing proxy" where you chat with an LLM via text, and it does the browsing and parsing and extracting, with links etc.
lol. It’s called Gemini.
2G speeds are awful, and cell companies clearly want it that way since 3G plans throttled to "2G speeds" and 5G plans still usually throttle to "2G speeds".<p>Starlink is offering 1Mbps here, which is enough for a normal internet experience. It's enough to stream video at 480p or 720p depending on the exact content and encoding settings.
I've been listening to 32kbit radio streams while on a 64k falloff. It used to be an important feature for me, the 64k up and down. Sounds like nothing, but is usable.
Telegram Messenger works fine at 2G (bar photos/videos, obviously). I was surprised by it. This is an upside of "building your own crypto" or the MTProto protocol, in their case.
Yeah but it's all links to the other places.
My mobile data plan is like this. It’s funny because when I’m “out of data” my provider sends an SMS suggesting I upgrade to more gigabytes, but then it still continues to work. And yes I checked my bills to make sure that they are not charging me for any usage excess of what’s included in the plan. It’s not even particularly slow. I can still browse the web, send and receive WhatsApp messages, images and videos, watch videos on TikTok etc.<p>My current plan is 2GB with rollover. Last month I used 2.5GB, and somehow this month has 2GB included + 2GB rollover = 4 GB available which by itself is also weird. Maybe most of the 2.5 GB I used last month was rollover from the month before that or something.<p>In total I have used 4.6 GB of mobile data so far this month, which is more than the 4 GB (2+2) I have available for this month and it’s still working.
There are still telcos offering 2GB plans. Wow. I’m on the cheapest plan and it comes with 400GB.
I always think by law any ISP that advertises speed and a has a cap must express the cap in terms of the advertised speed.<p>So telcos can advertise "Up to 200Mbps" for their package.<p>But then if they have a 2GB cap, they also need to say, "Caps at 80 seconds of usage".<p>Because that's what you're paying for at that speed, 80 seconds of usage per month.<p>Sure, you're not always (or indeed never) doing 200Mbps, but then you're not getting the speed you paid for.
Shockingly to some, the level of network development, especially wireless network, is not the same everywhere. Even population density varies greatly. I just checked our operators, the cheapest mobile plan comes at 1 GiB of data per month. Prices climb really fast after that, making 10-15 GiB (or more) too expensive for many, though you can get 5 GiB/mo subsidized for cheap if you have some sort of disability.
Where are you and how much do you pay?
Cheapest plan here in Romania is 75 GB for 2 euro/month, then the speed is limited to 1 Mbps.
Speed isn’t great, but that’s about 25% of “full speed” use over the course of a month, 600k seconds. Considering sleep is about 30% of a month as well, and assuming you’re not on a phone all day while working, it might be hard to hit that cap. Speed isn’t great, to reiterate. The cost is 30x cheaper than what I pay, and my speed, at my house, is 10mbps. No cap, but I use like 5gb/month.<p>Or am I way off and you hit the cap every month?
More datapoints in USD (Chile) from checking various companies:<p>150GB-200GB ~15 USD<p>400GB-450GB ~19-20 USD<p>Unlimited (without throttling) ~21-27 USD<p>This is the price after the new client ~20% discount expires (generally 6 months). The unlimited and higher tier usually include stuff like Amazon Prime Videos subscriptions, local IPTV or roaming gigs. All plans obviously include calls and texting.
Data point: I'm in the US on an old pre-paid plan that gets me 5GB per month at fast speed, dropping down to unlimited "2G" speed after that cap is hit, which I've done only twice in the past 12 years. $30 per month, and I always "bring my own device" (ie, I only buy unlocked phones, not through the carrier). I haven't shopped around for a while.
I'm in WA - I pay $20/mo for 15GB on Mint Mobile. I used to do $15/mo for 5GB but kept sometimes bumping into it (tethering and stuff) so I just bit the bullet and upgraded.
USA, paying $15/month for the cheapest T-Mobile plan. I only use a few hundred MB per month typically.
I got Connect by T-Mobile a few years ago when it was $10/mo prepaid ($11.03 with tax), and I am grandfathered in. It has a hard cap of 1GB/mo, then nothing. Then I got Hello Helium with a physical SIM on my exercise phone (out in the rain, at the gym) and it is completely free with ... wait for it ... 3GB/mo of data. Go figure. The Hello Helium app used to require location permission on at all times, but they eliminated that.
I imagine they are not from USA. But it's a surprisingly low plan, even considering that
They'd rather you keep paying monthly than start price comparing options.
Even ChatGPT struggles to compare prices between local power providers. Partly because TOU differences, but a lot of time because providers straight up won't provide kWH rate. Add solar, battery and ability to shift patterns (solar charging EV, hot water automation) and it's a huge mess.
Where do you live?<p>And are you poor?<p>My 40GB plan is 12$ a month.
I spend 90% of my time at home working (WFH) or relaxing or doing hobbies or sleeping, so most of my Internet use is via the WiFi. I chose one of the cheapest mobile data plans because I don’t need all that much mobile data when I already have Internet at home.<p>As long as I can still browse a little bit on the go, use WhatsApp to send and receive messages, photos, and videos, and I can watch a few TikTok and YouTube videos on the go, I’m happy.<p>My 2GB/month mobile data plan costs 179 NOK per month (~17.71 USD/month), plus I pay an extra monthly charge to use eSIM instead of physical SIM.
And I thought Swedish prices was bad. I got in on Fello (Telia MVNO) triple data offer, for like 1 weekend only, that's why it's so cheap.<p>Chilimobil seems to be the cheapest in Norway looking around, 1GB for 119, 2GB for 139, 6GB for 199 20GB for 249. Also unlimited plans capped on speed.<p>I have been using 5-10GB a month on my plan. (Cant use WIFI at work)<p>Anyway =￣ω￣=
Years ago, I picked cell carrier because of this. When I ran out, it switched to O(200kbps), which is fine for email, basic web search, etc.<p>It was actually a bit ironic that, at the time, you could burn through the whole high-speed quota in seconds or minutes, if you went to the wrong web page. Most carriers would stop or bill you an arm-and-a-leg after.
5G data roaming is hilarious for this. Verizon offered 500MB of high speed data roaming per day in Canada before throttling down to ~128kbps. I ran one single speedtest in the middle of Ottawa on Rogers 5G, didn't even finish the speedtest (hitting an error at the end that it failed), and got the text message going "You've run out of high speed data today. Do you want to buy another 500MB for $5?"<p>At least it's 2GB/day now. And my 5G roaming is off...
Roaming in some countries is like $10,000/gigabyte...<p>At that price, I dunno why they offer it at all. Are they just hoping to sue someone to get their whole house because they once watched some netflix overseas and forgot to use wifi?
They were deals that were made back in the WAP days where spending $1 a few times a day to check your business email made some semblance of sense, that then got neglected.
Companies should be required by law to nominate an explicit "credit limit" for every account, and customers should be allowed to reduce it to whatever they want. Morally there's no difference between a credit card with a $5,000 credit limit, and a cell phone plan where you can rack up $5,000 in charges if you do the wrong thing.
Thing is, the heaviest users are often the ones with some malware on their machine using up 100% of the bandwidth. When you limit that to 512kbps, thats <i>still</i> 129 gigabytes a month, on top of the 100 gigabytes a month you let the user use at high speed. When a typical user might use just 10 gigabytes a month, it seems dumb to let one user use 23x what everyone else is paying for/using, especially when that user is most likely just malware infected and not even personally benefiting!<p>A better limit I think is to limit the user to 10 kbps over a rolling 24h window, 100 kbps over a rolling 1h window, 1Mbits over a rolling 1 minute window, and 10 Mbits over a 1 second window. That way they can quickly check an email or load a web page... But it quickly slows down if they try to (ab)use it for hours on end.
It's not like 100GB is some huge amount of data. It's easy to hit, so if we're judging the overage amount we should be comparing it to the full 100GB, not some made up guy that only uses 10GB. There are users on unlimited consuming many terabytes, and they're not paying all that much more. It's not unfair to anyone if the cheaper plan is able to slowly reach 200GB or 300GB in a minimal-impact way.<p>Also dropping all the way to 10kbps with enough use would just suck. It's effectively unusable and it would be extreme penny-pinching to make sure the maximum 24/7 user can't squeak out more than 3GB extra on their 100GB plan. You get more variance than that from different month lengths.
> it seems dumb to let one user use 23x what everyone else is paying for/using<p>Bandwidth is use-it-or-lose-it. If nobody else was using it, then it doesn't hurt anything. And during high demand traffic shaping hopefully gives their traffic even lower priority.
> If nobody else was using it, then it doesn't hurt anything.<p>On networks I manage, there are clients who pay for large quantities of super low priority capacity - eg. for moving scientific data around, or backing up stuff that only needs to complete sometime in the next 30 days.<p>That means there is no such thing as unused bandwidth - almost every link is 100% full of paying customers data, and anyone using more displaces one of those low priority customers.
Starlink’s plans vary between markets, but in Australia they have a dirt cheap ($8 AUD per month or something) standby plan that gives you unlimited data capped at something like 500Kbps. If you’re going on a trip and need faster data, you can upgrade to a bigger plan for the rest of the billing month, charged on a pro rata basis, and then revert to the standby plan afterwards.<p>I used to use Inmarsat BGAN. BGAN would top out at around 250Kbps on a good day, and cost a few bucks per MB on a terminal that cost almost ten times as much as a Starlink Mini.
I leave my Starlink Mini in Standby Mode, which is $5/mo and is capped at 500KB/sec. I got the dish for free because I'm already a subscriber at home, so adding the $5/mo really isn't a big deal. It's perfect to go camping, because I might want to let my friends know that I had to move campsites, but I don't want to sit there and surf all day long and watch YouTube. Though 500KB/sec is more than enough to do all of that...
As a residential customer Starlink gave me the unlimited slow speed with a free mini for $60/year, as a tease to promote the full speed at $300/year. But it does everything I need it to, so I'm not incentivized to upgrade. I can listen to YouTube audio, make voip calls, download map tiles or talk with a chatbot without limitations. It's a large quality of life improvement for me because in my rural area there is no cellular connection during most of my driving.
I do think it's vastly superior to preferential treatment for some traffic, which seems to be the most popular alternative. The one caveat is that ISPs need to be forced to be transparent about this. Often, with cell providers, it's "Unlimited 5G" advertised, with a tiny asterisk pointing to even tinier disclaimer text at the bottom explaining that they throttle your rates once you hit a (fairly low) cutoff. That type of misleading marketing undercuts the fairness of the offer.
My internet providers (both home wifi and cellular) do this. The problem with unlimited slow speed is that it's too slow. I am sometimes unable to open the carrier's own app and pay for a recharge. Either the app just doesn't open or the transaction in the payments app fails.
Mobile has been like this for me for like a decade or so. But in the before times it was just barbaric and ridiculous to either be cut off or absolutely ravaged by fees.
Have they quantified the slow speed? Because when I had Viasat the slow speed so so unbelievably slow it had a hard time loading a regular SPA page in 2-3 minutes.
Nice that instead of completely cutting you off at the cap they put it in super slow 500 kbits. That is actually usable and used to be the fastest speed you could get at home.
My first company was an ISP, and our selling point was that we had higher bandwith out of Norway than any competitors in our price range.... A whopping 512kps.
I remember being amazingly excited to have saved up enough money to go to the store and buy a 33.6 modem (an amazing upgrade from my 14.4).<p>A year or so later I upgraded to a v.92 only to realize my ISP (I think it was IDT at the time) didn't support that and only supported some other 56k "standard" (details are sketchy on this, I was like 12). I was devastated and it was too late to drive back to computer city to exchange it for the correct one.<p>Now I have 10G symmetric in my house.
Mmmmm ISDN copper…
If I remember right we could get 64kb/s or 128kb/s if you bundled them, that was in Germany. But also, we didn't have that, we only had a 56kb/s modem and I remember really wanting ISDN when I was a kid :)
Copper, but not ISDN. Fractional E1 leased line. There were expensive and limited ISDN connections available in Norway at the time ('95), but not cost effective for an ISP.
Still with pretty low latency (25-35ms) as well (similar to the Standby (aka pause) state you can put the account into for $5/mo)
The standby account -is- 500 kbps, probably it's the same mode, so I'd expect the same performance.<p>Anecdotally, even though I'd have told you that 500 was probably enough for non-streaming stuff that I do most of the time, in my experience when my connection switches over to Starlink (I have Comcast primarily, but it has had reliability problems the last few months), it usually hits the Starlink limits pretty hard. I've never identified any nefarious activity, it just seems like all the little things on my workstations and various devices that chatter add up to enough to trigger Starlink's controls.
The first modem that I <i>owned</i> was 1200 baud. The first one that I used was 110 and it was exciting when it was upgraded to 300. It took ~20 years from when I first got online until my home internet reached 512kbps.
That's faster than my cell phone in the areas where I desperately need Starlink....500kb > 0
I'd disagree that that is usable today. A few days ago I had some network trouble that restricted me to about 350kbps, although stable without much packet loss, and a lot of stuff just didn't practically work. At that speed, loading images and resources on webpages within timeout limits is hard. Many web apps don't work, or degrade enough that you wouldn't want to use them.<p>Also what do we actually use the web for? A lot of streaming video and audio that won't work. A lot of reading webpages with a lot of images and ads, that won't work. I'm sure that Wikipedia would load and work slowly, but that's not really representative of web usage today.<p>There's a separate argument about whether the web should be like that, but regardless of your thoughts on that, it is like that.
Set your device to "metered network" and all the background shit will stop running. That's what I had to do to get my Starlink mini working in Standby mode. As soon as your device is on WiFi it thinks it's a free for all and starts updating and downloading shit in the background.<p>The 500KB/sec is more than enough as long as that isn't happening.
I need to go improve my knowledge, I haven't paying enough attention to the options lately, and I experience the same phenomenon -- I have a few workstations along with some IoT trash and Starlink standby mode pegs just from the chatter from the devices. As you say, on WiFi they don't bother controlling themselves and they are constantly finding things to do.
I lived with 2.7KBPS<p>- News, phlogs, Wikipedia, translation services -> Gopher or Gemini, gopher://magical.fish and gemini://gemi.dev plus gopher://sdf.org and Bongusta Phlogs. It's magical.<p>- IRC or IRC+Bitlbee -> IM, Jabber, IRC, most protocols<p>- Email -> Mbsync+msmtp + mutt. Caching helps there<p>- Usenet -> Slrn+Slrnpull, it has tech groups, caching and there's a web news discuss group too<p>- SSH -> Mosh
This is fine if you're the sort of person who knows about IRC, is satisfied with content on Gopher, etc.<p>But most people depend on contacting family and friends via WhatsApp/Messenger/etc, they depend on YouTube for entertainment and education, their TV is increasingly online, they read their newspaper on a website with images, etc.<p>It's a privilege, and a lifestyle choice, to be able to live on 2.7KBPS.
You can use whatsapp over IRC->Bitlbee and reading newspapers at least for text mode. Privilege? more like the reverse. There are phone data plans for $10 that upon finishing your monthly data, you got throttled like that until the next month.<p>And in my country people did crazy stuff in order to ilegally watch soccer matches in cable TV's, such as writting magnetic deco cards with an electronic PICF84 based tool.<p>That compared to using Lagrange and gemini://gemi.dev to read the local newspapers and bookmark them in order to avoid typing down the https:// URL over and over, it's lke going for a Ph.D instead of joining a local library.<p>People isn't that dump, it's just lazy. And, sadly, uninformed.<p>In the infamous blackout in Spain, I was the only one in the bus that could fetch the news reliabily over Gemini due to the low bandwitdh.
The rest were waiting over and over.<p>And after that everyone got a pocket radio tuner just because. Something I was just doing over decades too because FM and AM radio will actually work anywhere.<p>But the web doesn't offer a nice degradation. In the blackout, they just kept sending the full raw data, literal thousands of cookie trackers, JS scripts and the mandatory ads. You at least have <a href="https://text.npr.org" rel="nofollow">https://text.npr.org</a> and <a href="https://lite.cnn.com" rel="nofollow">https://lite.cnn.com</a>. My country? They just pushed the web SPA's and OFC they set no OPUS stream (something every smartphone understands from at least 2012) with a smaller bitrate.
I hope we get LLM browser agents that will convert the web back to that state again. You can get sorta close now with adblockers, various "lite" modes, and unofficial client sites, but it would be nice if it were universal.
This is a separate discussion, but while I agree in general that pages should be less bloated than they are, ads shouldn't burn my CPU, etc, I think it's a sign of progress that the web takes much more bandwidth. 4K video is better than HD, is better than SD, is better than no video. Illustrations improve articles. More client side Javascript tends to mean more interactivity which is often a good thing (not always). The web today does so much more than it did 20 years ago, and we should be proud of that achievement rather than push back on progress by expecting the web to work on a connection from 20 years ago.
> used to be the fastest speed you could get at home<p>My 1200 baud from 1987 would beg to differ. Granted, that was for bulletin boards, not the WWW (which hadn't been invented yet).
Good enough to play Quake 3 Arena.
You might just be able to stream 240p youtube without stuttering with that.
No, <i>not</i> nice. Previously, if we exceeded the 50Gb cap, there was the option to continue on at high-speed for $1/Gb. And that's the same price per Gb as the base plan of 50Gb/month for $50. Now, it's either upgrade to unlimited, or enjoy Netflix at 500Kbps. I want the old plan back.
Now the cap is 100G. Seems like an odd complaint. Did you often exceed 100Gb?
It's unlikely that we will exceed 100Gb/month in the camper. But if we do, it's either slow speeds, or pay $165/month for unlimited roam <i>every single month we use it</i>, versus paying a little extra for the few times we go over. In the end, it'll probably work out okay for us, but I liked the previous option of being able to get high-speed data at a reasonable price should we go over the limit.
Fortunately 1. For slow speeds, it’s not like you have to live with that slowness every day. The impact is limited to the remaining few days of the month where you ran up against the 100GB, so the either-or in your statement looks worse than it is; and 2. Starlink makes it dead easy to switch from plan to plan right in the app so you can go right back to a lower plan when the higher one is not needed. With the caveat that they do change what plans are available sometimes as we’re seeing here.
If I calculate correctly then 500 kbps is actually enough for Netflix in standard quality. If one wants to binge watch 4K (7 GB per hour) then the unlimited plan makes more sense anyway.
Wait, the price didn’t change though did it? So you get 100 gigs for the price of 50 before?
Unrelated to the conversation, but the post title was something like "Starlink roam 50GB is now 100GB and unlimited slow speed after that", then a minute later it's now "Roam 50GB is now Roam 100GB".<p>Was this change made by a mod or OP, and why would someone making that change? I do think the original title was more descriptive, and the new title was completely out of context, or it's imply that everyone is using Starlink and know what's Roam 50GB is.
The guidelines[0] state:<p>> ...<p>> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.<p>0: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html</a>
I would say that omitting the crucial detail about the unlimited slow speed access is pretty misleading. It's a difference between needing to set up a fallback channel, and not, which halves the complexity.
I think this is one of the cases where strictly applying the guideline fails the reader, but yeah, I can see that this guideline make sense most of the (other) cases.
They changed two things and the title only has one of the things, so personally I think that's 'misleading' enough to append the rest.
I believe there is a rule where the HN title should mirror the article’s title
I guess the idea is that the Starlink URL is displayed after the title so it's redundant, but it definitely makes it impossible to understand at first glance if you're unfamiliar with Starlink service names
Yes, this is weird title change.
The HN website shows the host part of the URL right next to the title, so it says "Roam 50GB is now Roam 100GB (starlink.com)", but it looks strange in my RSS reader
If I were to guess, probably because Musk achieved self-fulfilling prophecy of hate and discriminatory handling against him, and now any obviously him related content gets massive, organic, figurative, score penalties.<p>Tesla and SpaceX posts used to routinely hit the top spots and accumulate thousands of comments here, now they hardly stay an hour on the first page. Someone on the Internet's first headphone amp is now considered more important to people here than the world's largest rocket flying, if that comes with Musk attached.<p>Obviously as anybody knows, that's how `hate` actually works: silent exclusion, not posturing. But that was what they advocated for years, so, here's my slow claps...
Really interesting that Starlink continues to improve the service when they have an absolute monopoly on fast, portable satellite internet.
I assume they want to attract as many customers has possible <i>while</i> they have that monopoly - eventually they're going to need to compete with Amazon (Leo) and China (Qianfan, although I assume it'll be banned in the US). The cost of the phased-array terminals probably means there will be some stickiness.<p>Also as has been noted, in some markets they do compete on price: <a href="https://restofworld.org/2025/starlink-cheaper-internet-africa/" rel="nofollow">https://restofworld.org/2025/starlink-cheaper-internet-afric...</a>
That's the magic of the free market. Even with no direct rival yet, Starlink innovates like crazy because the threat of competition is always there and consumers demand excellence. Unlike state-granted monopolies, those parasitic structures stagnate and plunder the people.
They are interested in other markets where they don't have a monopoly though. Most of the time my cell phone has fast 5g internet, and my cell phone company is trying to sell me on their 5g internet (I have fibre so I don't see the point). For many potential starlink customers there is competition. If you on the ocean they are the only option. If you travel on land they can be the only option in places but you can probably live with no service in those few places.
I would guess that for many of their customers, they are still competing with non-satellite internet.
Absolutely monopoly? You mean other than Kuiper, right?<p><a href="https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/innovation-at-amazon/what-is-amazon-project-kuiper" rel="nofollow">https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/innovation-at-amazon/what-i...</a>
They have a monopoly on sat-only market, but that isn’t really big enough of a market to support their growth goals. They want to eat all wireless providers Internet as well.
They have an absolute monopoly on a very niche market in developed countries. 5G beats satellite in both speed and convenience IMHO.<p>It's a completely different story in countries with crappy networks (looking at you Philippines), remote areas, or offshore.
Makes sense. Make your service good enough with your rocket+satellite synergy that competitors would need to spend $500B to be competitive.
Some lessons were learned from iRobot.
I've never read Peter Thiel's books, but isn't that kinda a part of his playbook? Monopolies, but driving progress? "Competition is for losers"? I never fully understood it because it seems like then you're just competing with yourself.
I had a “hit” post on bsky [0] (90 likes, big numbers for me) asking whether people would want an unlimited mobile plan throttled at 256kbps for $2/month. Seems like yes?<p>There’s lots to say about how useable it is (I often get throttled when traveling and it’s really not that bad + it helps curb any desire to scroll videos!)<p>But mainly I want to ask - I looked into it for a minute and it seems like you couldn’t start an mvno because carriers wouldn’t let you cannibalize them?<p>You can get very cheap IoT plans but if you tried reselling IoT as esims for consumers, the carriers would kill it?<p>So yeah - Starlink to mobile is actually the only viable way that routes around this problem?<p>(((email in profile if you’re cuckoo enough like me and want to start a self service’d throttled mvno)))<p>[0] <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/greg.technology/post/3mbmwsytnyc23" rel="nofollow">https://bsky.app/profile/greg.technology/post/3mbmwsytnyc23</a>
Embeddedworks sells unlimited 750kbps service for $90/year. Its data only, no phone or SMS.<p>When I talked to them earlier this year they said there was potential to sell other data rates though nothing was as low as $2/month.
Unfortunately their plan is an IoT plan “Not Intended for Phones or Tablets” [0]<p>That’s exactly the issue - it’s a great plan, it’s just contractually stopped from being offered because a lot of people would potentially switch to that..! :)<p>To me, the fact that the restriction exists is a proof of the demand for this.<p>[0] <a href="https://embeddedworks.net/product/wsim0331-sub/" rel="nofollow">https://embeddedworks.net/product/wsim0331-sub/</a>
There is something like this but twice the prive in Finland <a href="https://www.moi.fi/laitenetti" rel="nofollow">https://www.moi.fi/laitenetti</a> . Can't make outgoing calls but there are pay as you internet call out services for that occaddional use case.
In Japan you have consumer (with voice) plans for<p>Unlimited 32kbps $1.60/mo (I guess this makes more sense for IoT?)<p>Unlimited 300kbps $4/mo<p>Unlimited 1.5Mbps $6/mo<p><a href="https://mineo.jp/price/#mysoku" rel="nofollow">https://mineo.jp/price/#mysoku</a>
Not just you, that might be a overall record for bsky?
"unlimited", or basically ~80GB/month if you saturate it 24/7 as users are likely to.
This doesn't seem to have anything to do with the current advertisement being discussed.
I want the old plan back. If we went over the 50Gb/month, there was the option of continuing on at $1/Gb, which is the same price per Gb as the base plan. IOW, they didn't punish you for going over. Now if we go over, it's either put up with slow speed data, or upgrade to unlimited.
This is the equivalent of having the previous 50GB base plan and going over by $50 worth of data (an additional 50GB). If you were routinely going 50GB over the 50GB plan, I'd suggest that maybe a 50GB plan wasn't the right plan for you. Under the old plan, 100GB of data would have cost $100. Residential unlimited is $120, so for most users this would seem like an improvement.
The residential plan can't be used with the Starlink mini, only the full size Starlink. At least that's the case in the US. Cheapest plan is now $165 for users that need over 100GB.<p>I still think this is mostly a positive change, but it is a bummer that the service plans keep changing.
That's the thing, we don't regularly go over 50Gb. Probably won't go over 100Gb, either. But if we do, it's either slow speeds, or pay $165/month for unlimited roam <i>every single month we use it</i>, versus paying a little extra for the few times we go over.
> every single month we use it, versus paying a little extra for the few times we go over<p>I'm interpreting "every single month we use it" as every month you use starlink. In that case, you're incorrect. You can change plans when you hit the limit and then change back for the next month.<p>So instead of paying $1/GB extra every time you go above 50GB, you pay $115 extra every time you go above 100GB.<p>For most usage patterns, the second option is cheaper. And it sounds like your usage pattern is one of those.<p>(If I interpreted you wrong, and "every single month we use it" is supposed to mean the months you go over 100GB, then "every single month we use it" and "the few times we go over" mean exactly the same thing. Why word it with such different implications each time?)
I don't wanna defend Starlink here, but you can do a lot more with the slow speeds than you realize.
So you're mad you're paying the same for double the data, of which it wasn't completely used beforehand anyway.<p>You do you, I guess.
Awesome news. When we started RV traveling we wanted to do the 50G plan whenever we were out of cell-range but it turned out to be such a convenient service that 50G didn't last us more than 3 days so we switched to unlimited and haven't regretted it. Absolutely worth it because even the residential dish works flawlessly while driving and the kids can game and stream all at the same time from the pickup.<p>I put some more details on my blog if you're interested in power specs or DNS options on the router, etc. <a href="https://bitcreed.us/bitblog/starlink-on-the-road" rel="nofollow">https://bitcreed.us/bitblog/starlink-on-the-road</a><p>You can also start on the 100G plan and when you run out of data switch to unlimited right from the app. That'll bring down the first-month bill a tad and give you a chance to gauge the "slow speed" option.
Slightly off-topic: does anyone know how to reach Starlink by phone or email?<p>They started billing me but I never received a sat dish.<p>And their support Website is a chatbot :-(.
Finally I can use Codex/OpenCode even out in the woods. No work-life balance; just vibing everywhere I go.
I spend a lot of time out of reception and starlink has been fantastic. So much so that I leave it on anytime I'm driving where I have cellular reception because it's just consistently good. I get ~100Mbps whether it's a forest service road, ATV trail, or on the highway through curvy mountain passes.<p>I'm on the 50GB plan so doubling for free is very nice, but it looks like they yanked the ability to optionally purchase additional high speed data for $1/GB. Maybe it's still there?
Maybe I'm just greedy, but I'd like an in between option. Maybe you could argue that this is it, I suppose. I have Starlink in standby mode ($5/mo) as a backup for my primary Comcast ($110/mo) connection. At 500 Kbps, the Starlink connection tends to be fairly useless if the Comcast connection fails, aside from having just enough bandwidth to use it to activate full service. But real Starlink service is over $100/mo and still significantly lower capacity and quality than Comcast (when it is working normally), so it's hard to want to pay that for it as a backup. Rather than an arbitrary data cap, I'd love to have a mediocre-but-still-cheap option that could actually handle my regular non-streaming needs for occasional use. Maybe 2 Mbps and $20/month, something like that.
That’s great for me. I use it mainly for work (food trucks, not much data) but sometimes I’ll use it for personal stuff like weekend camping and hit the 50. Now I can just not worry about it ever.
I had free Starlink wifi on a recent flight (Hawaiian) and it was an insanely better internet experience than I've ever had on a plane.
Starlink has short contract duration. That means they can also increase prices at short notice. It's happened in the past (in particular for sailors).<p>You may think you're getting a good deal on your Starlink dish. However, when prices suddenly increase or conditions worsen, you have no recourse.
The actual thing I've experienced is they've added cheaper plans, given us coastal coverage, and international coverage. I've had it since 2024 and between the Google Fiber at home and Starlink on the move, I think this has been overall A+ experience. 5/5 on both.<p>Besides, there's no real alternative to Starlink right now and their price is very reasonable. If the price rose a lot I'd use the pause/resume feature or the tiny 10 G plan.
I’ve kept it on the backup service for 10 GB at $10 or whatever and it’s pretty cool. Used it off my balcony in SF when Google Fiber had a 1 hr outage, take it on road trips, and stuff like that. Totally worth it.
This makes the $50/mo plan viable for wan failover. Still have the cgnat issue, but there's some documentation about requesting an ipv4 address from support. Has anyone succeeded with that?
At least it's not like my mobile service, which when I run out of data also disables the payment provider for their web portal to buy more data.
Has anyone used starlink for remoting into a work desktop? If so was the latency bearable?
I work remotely and use a starlink mini for work and general internet usage since I road trip in the summer a lot. For work I'm not using doing RDP/remote desktop stuff since I have a company-issued laptop, but I have some experience using it to stream graphics-intensive games from my home PC with a nice GPU to my phone with a mobile controller attached to it.<p>I saw around 50-100ms of latency in ideal conditions with a clear view of the sky. There are distinct large latency spikes every 30ish minutes, which I think is due to the dish switching between different satellites.<p>I think the latency would be fine for working, but it will hardly be transparent. When using it to play games, I've mostly stuck to stuff that doesn't require fast responses or parry mechanics, etc.<p>Even without RDP-ing into another workstation, the latency spikes on video calls can be noticeable. Moment-to-moment video conferencing latency is totally fine, given that most of the major players in the space have pretty good latency compensation baked in.<p>A few details/complications:<p>- I'm usually within ~500 miles of my home, which is relevant because starlink satellites communicate with ground stations, and being closer to home will still have a meaningful impact on latency<p>- host PC is on a wired fiber connection<p>- I live relatively far north (~65N) and starlink's network isn't biased toward polar orbiting satellites, so my coverage probaby isn't representative of behavior further south. You can see a map of satellites and note the relatively poor arctic and subarctic region coverage here: <a href="https://satellitemap.space/" rel="nofollow">https://satellitemap.space/</a>
>There are distinct large latency spikes every 30ish minutes, which I think is due to the dish switching between different satellites.<p>The satellites are in Low Earth Orbit and zipping across the sky at an extremely high rate of speed. If you were in the middle of absolutely flat nowhere-land, you could maybe get a few minutes on a single satellite before it goes over the horizon, not 30 minutes.
Agree that it's only a few mins per satellite, but interestingly I've noticed this pause every now and then (and 30mins seems around what I've noticed) in New Zealand. The latency just spikes and sometimes connections are lost for a brief period then suddenly everything comes right again. Curious why that happens. However it's one reason why I still recommend fibre or 5G if it is availiable as both seem to be more reliable than Starlink.
If you have distinct spikes, you might have an obstruction. You need a much larger view of the sky to the north to completely get rid of that. If the connection is perfect, you should get consistent 20ms pings all day long. But it is really difficult to do, especially when traveling and you don't have control of where you can actually put the dish.
20ms pings, and I'm on the original gen 1 dish from the beta days still. Can't really tell much difference from a land-based connection. The mini is even faster when it has an equivalent view of the sky.
That's not bad for the cheap plan. Even the slow mode is fast enough for video conferencing and doing basic remote work. They still have a separate unlimited plan for anyone who needs more.
What is advantage of Starlink Residental over Roam?
I know this is probably niche, but it would be nice to be able to buy, say, 50GB and have a year to use.
I just wish they would bring back their experimental $40 plan (and make it available in my area).
Don't like what the guy says [0], but this is incredible technology and I'm impressed by how early we are getting it.<p>[0]: <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2009171282030653877" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2009171282030653877</a>
Musk has excellent products but I wouldn't give him a dime. I have no problem with conservative politics, but his flavour is well beyond that.
Agreed although it's getting to the point that other companies are now using Starlink to provide other services so I've often used Starlink (even if indirectly) without realising it.<p>For example I go tramping and pretty much every remote accomodation I've stayed at use Starlink. My mobile provider uses Starlink for direct-to-cell services. My national airline uses Starlink as backhaul for their in-flight WiFi.<p>I know there are other competitors coming who aim to provide alternatives to Starlink -- this should mean at some point accomodation providers, mobile networks, airlines, etc can switch to them.
Thanks for letting us all know. We needed to hear that. /s
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They could make it 1000GB for US$10/month and I still wouldn't give any money to a company associated with that man.
I know everyone has strong opinions about Elon, but for $10/mo I would absolutely get this. At $50/mo, I don't have enough of a need to get it.
"That man" is the only person so far who's actually helped the Iranian people get their voices heard amidst government shutdown of the entire internet.<p>Like it or not, Persians love him.
This is a very low effort reply. Does doing one good thing erase all the bad things a person has done? If that's the argument you're making, make it.
don't call someone else's comment low effort and follow it with little more than a strawman-ish summary of what you'd like the comment to have said
As I recently said about Scott Adams: "Good things can be done by Bad people." I think to assume that humans are these monolithic, logically consistent entities is to badly misunderstand humanity.<p>For example, Planned Parenthood--an organization I definitely believe in--was essentially created by a woman who was a eugenicist--something I definitely do not believe in.
Were I to be supporting PP when Sanger was still alive, I would not have been enriching her, or enabling other things that she believed in (at least not to any extent that would trouble me). Mostly because PP has always been a not-for-profit organization.<p>Being a Starlink customer, to me, has a straight line connection to enabling that man to do <i>all</i> the things he does.
> I think to assume that humans are these monolithic, logically consistent entities is to badly misunderstand humanity.<p>I don't think anyone is doing that though. But to decide whether to give someone's business money you do have to come to some sort of decision about their net good vs bad. It's logically consistent for the OP to be aware that Musk is aiding internet connectivity in Iran but still oppose giving him money.
people understandably love to understand complex things as simple logical puzzle pieces. they do it with words too. people have this tendency to act like words are formally-defined mathematical concepts, and then agonise over whether their experiences fit those concepts, then use those concepts as proof for their arguments. this is, of course, essentially simply a description of communicating with language, and for most words it's absolutely fine; the words have so little variance and breadth in definition that it doesn't matter. the issue arises when the words are not clearly defined, and it becomes even worse (and more common) when the words are emotionally loaded. people adore using emotionally, loaded, weakly defined terms to end an argument quickly. it's essentially sophistry. we're all absolutely awash with these terms right now due to the dominance of headlines, tweets, content titles and other short form stretches that demand dense, emotionally charged meaning in a small space. if you'd like some examples, take "fascism", "sexual harassment" and "eugenics".<p>don't say someone is "essentially a eugenicist". it's such a vaguely defined term that this borders on useless. if you believe something like this, justify it with: "she supported x policy I disagree with" or "she believed in the reduction of y trait in the populace" or whatever it is that triggered you to take on this belief in the first place
Low effort reply?!? Did you see the comment it’s in reply to? It’s completely substance free complaining about Elon in a thread about Starlink.
By this logic, Persians also hate him because he played a big factor in destroying USAID, an organization that has helped Iranians in humanitarian aid and disaster relief. Persian-language broadcasting by Voice of America and Radio Farda has been destroyed by Musk.
> By this logic, Persians also hate him because he played a big factor in destroying USAID, an organization that has helped Iranians in humanitarian aid and disaster relief.<p>Is this a joke? Persians never received such aids. If USAID sent any money to Iran, it went straight to the islamic regime's proxies in the region.
And Escobar financed hospitals.<p>The same guy could help some people and kick others in the dirt at the same time.<p>The same Persians in a western country would be called a threat to western culture by parties Musk endorses
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That's such an unique viewpoint that no one has expressed on the internet.<p>Thank you for bringing value to this comments section.
The more I learn about Musk's past, his family, his ties to the paypal mafia, the more I want absolutely nothing to do with him.<p>Him or any of his companies will never see a penny from me.
Noted, your principles are clearly priceless. The rest of us will just keep enjoying the world’s best mobile internet while you hold the line.
You are good.
Thank you!
This resonates for me.<p>I do not want my technology tied to some person I consider of despicable character. Would I buy a cell phone, even at a good deal from Putin? No. Corporations have increasingly become political. Thanks, United vs FEC! So we see them taking a knee to gain commercial advantage. And as in this case harm to our democracy.<p>In my opinion, no discussion about Starlink is complete without considering whether the money you pay will be used to profit people or causes you do not want.<p>If you need this, then great. But I have other choices, just as I would not touch a tesla even if you gave it to me. I just am not that desperate.
I’m always amazed how much people attribute to citizens united, a ruling that overturned portions of a law that was only on the books for 7 years at the time.
A large part of it is mistaking the effect of the central holding in <i>Buckley v. Valeo</i> (1976) as stemming from <i>Citizens United v. FEC</i> (2010).
A law that existed to forestall or stop a trend of increasing regulatory capture via bribery, er, "campaign contributions"
Hmmm. The ruling had a far greater impact than simply <i>that</i> law. It established that corporations have the same right to free speech that ordinary citizens do <i>as a general principle</i>.<p>What is the result. We now have a situation where a candidate cannot be elected without a large amount of funding. You will need to either be a billionaire or a corporate toady to get elected. Who is the elected official beholden to? What does the elected official have to do to improve their chances of re-election? Do better by the voters do better by the corporation. This is simple logic.<p>Added to that you have corporations and the rich controlling the media. Murdoch, Bezos, Musk. If the common citizens want to have a living wage be the minimum, Jeff Bezos does not. How willing is the Washington Post to raise the banner of changing the US minimum wage? This is a rhetorical question as the answer is obvious.<p>And any media that are not outright owned by the greed afflicted, most media receive a substantial part of their income from advertising, they are also not beholden to common citizens. The New York Times wants to appeal to the rich because that is the market for their advertisers. That is why you see stories in the NYT about "How much second vacation home will two million buy you in Maine". And that is why you do not see stories about "How much hovel will minimum wage buy you in Maine".
Apple is incorporated in California, USA. Does this mean that you're not buying iPhones either because you don't like Trump?
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Guy is literally mask of white supremacist, why are you supporting this buddy? But yeah, the people that think his robot legions will solve world poverty and bring "sustainable abundance" for all are the sane ration thinking ones.
While I semi-agree, they both do plenty to encourage it. I mostly just wish Elon would stop using the R word. Not enough that I’m going to cancel my plan, but come on.
I get the fight to keep one word to remain non-offensive, instead of changing it every ~10yrs. It might be a locality thing too, when I was going to school the teachers used "special education" but now I've unintentionally offended with that as well. Google says it's "Intellectually Disabled" now. It's hard to keep up, and pretty annoying to constantly be tip-toeing around certain words.<p>I leave it to others to fight that fight, but I'd take any word.
I'm not certain what "the R word" is, but if you mean "retard" (and derivatives), then there's absolutely nothing wrong with that word. No reasonable person is offended by calling things retarded.
I agree that no person <i>should</i> be offended. Obviously that's not ground truth..<p>If we could all agree that life would be easier if people were offended less, then instead of only trying to get people to offend other people less by telling them what is acceptable to say we could also get people to try to not take offense as much when they hear what they don't want to hear we'd have solved the offense problem from both ends.<p>TL;DR: Just be nice. Life's easier when you're nice even when people aren't nice to you but it does take effort.
I do get that certain people go way too far with the PC stuff, but I’m happy to increase the number of words I don’t use by 1 in this particular instance because it is reasonably offensive to some people. I just lump it in with racial slurs.<p>And like I said, I’m not dropping my Starlink over it, I just think the world would be a tiny bit better if he didn’t use it.
I find the Nazi salutes more distasteful than the word.
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You don’t have any savings in the bank, right? That money you’re hoarding could be buying mosquito nets to save lives - you’re killing people by not donating everything you have.
There is no moral requirement for me to impoverish myself in response to an idiot cutting government/public spending on critical assistance to those in need.<p>There might be other moral imperatives which indicate that I ought to cash out the 401(k) and give it to people who need support, but this guy and his fucked up "DOGE" bullshit ain't it.
Why is that money I'm hoarding currently being devalued by tax cuts to the ultra-wealthy and bonuses paid out to ethnic cleanser shock troops?
Note the same, maybe if my bank account was equivalent to Elon Musk's it would be a fair argument but hardly the same to expect a shitposter to be equivalent to a man who is a billionaire.
How's that? Are you referring to his work on the DOGE team efforts that were simply recommendations?
[citation needed]
Take your pick homie:<p><a href="https://ph.ucla.edu/news-events/news/research-finds-more-14-million-preventable-deaths-2030-if-usaid-defunding" rel="nofollow">https://ph.ucla.edu/news-events/news/research-finds-more-14-...</a><p><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-documentary/the-shutdown-of-usaid-has-already-killed-hundreds-of-thousands" rel="nofollow">https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-documentary...</a><p><a href="https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-shutdown-has-led-to-hundreds-of-thousands-of-deaths/" rel="nofollow">https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-shutdown-has-led-to-hund...</a><p>This one is a PDF, so warning:<p><a href="https://www.medschool.umaryland.edu/media/som/news/news-logos/BU-researcher-warns-of-367,000-deaths-from-halted-USAID-programs_.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.medschool.umaryland.edu/media/som/news/news-logo...</a><p>So right now, there are nearly 400,000 verifiable deaths due to the cuts of these programs. It's on track to be way worse than what I imagined, several million to 14 million.<p>I'm sorry but that's just straight up evil behavior.
Wait until you hear about what the early pioneers of the electronic device you're using right now used to think... And do.<p>You gonna throw your computer away?
My concern is <i>that man</i>, not the many people who work in the corporations who make the computing devices that I use. It's not exactly that those corporations have an unblemished record, but compared to what that guy did during his brief utterly ruinous stint with DOGE and in his election support of that other guy, there isn't a computing device company that doesn't look like St Francis of Assissi.
Don't worry, this is the type of project that can easily get nationalized with zero pushback if anyone with authority wanted to.
Regardless of the price and the data, I'd never subscribe to this service due to the owner.
I'm looking forward for alternatives from a more neutral vendor
I think they will have enough clients from other parts of the world to make it work. Large areas of my country can't really be covered with wired networks, it's too expensive to make it economically feasible without massive government subsidies, for which there's no money.<p>Starlink has already been used to connect very remote rural schools which previously only had dial-up connectivity (enough to send text email, but not much else).<p>And nobody here cares about American politics, we have enough of our own problems.
It's not really American politics when Elon decides to turn off your countries internet for personal gain. Having such critical infrastructure in the hands of someone unstable wouldn't be a choice I ever make for something so important.
You are probably referring to ukraine and you should know that this was entirely fake news. It was never disabled. It had never been enabled in Crimea in the first place, in accordance with US gov policy.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_in_the_Russian-Ukrainian_War" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_in_the_Russian-Ukrain...</a><p><pre><code> In 2022, Elon Musk denied a Ukrainian request to extend Starlink's coverage up to Russian-occupied Crimea during a counterattack on a Crimean port, from which Russia had been launching attacks against Ukrainian civilians; doing so would have violated US sanctions on Russia.[18] This event was widely reported in 2023, erroneously characterizing it as Musk "turning off" Starlink coverage in Crimea.
</code></pre>
But you’re right of course that it might be in a sovereign country’s interest to build out their wired infrastructure instead of relying on external actors.
The vast majority of the international community, including the United Nations, the United States, and the European Union, recognizes Crimea as a sovereign part of Ukraine. :)
Sanctions were in place because russia controlled crimea regardless of international recognition, so what's your point
Oh damn, you’re right. The US should provide a portion of the Ukraine aid to the government in Crimea.<p>Perhaps we can drop off some Abrams for the Donbas region next time. It’s part of Ukraine after all.
Nice to see what the colonizer imperialist state actors that love Zionism and unequal exchange side with.
USAID was ironically a significant customer for Starlink. People are probably already familiar with the 5,000 Ukraine terminal scandal, but pretty much all their offices (in Colombia at least) had 1 or more terminals.
What does USAID have anything to do with this conversation? Well, DOGE was largely responsible for putting the final nail on that coffin. If you think he cares about remote rural schools having connectivity you better think again.
It’s not “American politics” when a guy does a Nazi salute on live TV. So thanks for showing your political inclination.
Would you rather buy from Jeff Bezos or a Chinese state-owned enterprise? Those are your likely options within the next 5-10 years.
In 20026 that’s a question I would have to answer with «I’ll have to get back to you on that».<p>In fact, sometimes I wish I had chosen a profession where I didn’t need an internet connection at all.
Nobody has been forced to switch to a space based internet solution.<p>You don't need to buy from any of those people.
Does Jeff Bezos believe we need white solidarity to survive because non-white people are a threat to white men?
Boycott noted, meanwhile, I’ll be enjoying double the roaming data while you wait for that legendary ‘neutral’ competitor to beam down from the heavens.
I live and work from a van part of the year and am perfectly fine with a 4g router almost anywhere save some mountain climbing spot, so there's really no need for me.
I pay about 30€ and get about 250GB when in France and 30GB whenever I enter a new country so I'm not lacking considering my usage, but thank you
Hey, at least they won't be getting data from and enriching an avowed racist, so they got that going for them.<p>Enjoy your part in creating misery for people who just happen to not be white.
something something, sounds like a bluesky post.
I respect your principles, but at the same time, using Starlink for now does encourage other potential competitors to come forth, at which time you could switch.
I’m 100% on the same boat. The only competitor I can see is Amazon Leo. Having options is great but they both suck.
thank you for not bidding up the price
See also the "Fuck You Elon" exhibit at this past Burning Man, powered by starlink.
There are two Chinese alternatives being deployed right now. I believe one is called Guowang. As a red blooded American, I would rather go with Guowang over an American Nazi.
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The willingness to keep backing his companies, despite his political trajectory, is honestly hard to understand.
Comments about Elon on HN have become exhaustingly cringe; dripping with devout derision, reeking of righteous reproach, and smacking of sanctimonious seething.<p>Apparently we must all gnash our teeth at the mere mention of "that man" or anything associated with him. It's as plebeian as it is predictable.<p>I'm sure this will now be downvoted into oblivion and I'll be accused of "defending an avowed racist" or some other such nonsense.