1984: Starlink First Partner: Local Cops and State Military

[jim bell]

 On Thursday, October 1, 2020, 06:11:21 AM PDT, Zenaan Harkness <zen at freedbms.net> wrote:
 
 On Thu, Oct 01, 2020 at 03:54:26AM +0000, jim bell wrote:[snip]
 
> >> What I believe I DID say, and what I will say again, is that Musk is putting himself into a position where he could do a great deal of good for libertarian causes, in part by bypassing governments' ability to censor or cut off Internet access.   
> 
> >    There's little to no connection between "libertarian causes" and "internet access".
> 
> Then you have a poor imagination.  Access to the Internet _IS_ a "libertarian cause".   The fact that nations such as India are selectiely  obstructing its people's access to the Internet should anger you immensely.  Authoritarian (and certainly totalitarian!) nations are merely the epitome of such obstruction.  Many people might not think mere "India" as being unfree, but nevertheless it's a problem.
...
[snip]
>There are certain tasks before us in the realm of "modern communication", including #OpenHW, #OpenFabs, seamless peer to peer mesh networks (ethernet between neighbours, mobile phone wifis etc), and given a new properly distributed (etc) overlay net, then there is no reason that some links cannot go via Musk's Starlink satellites - just another rando hop in the mesh, with its own characteristics (bandwidth, cost, latency, etc).

>There is no -inherent- reason to disclude any particular link type (although yes, satellite-accessing nodes may be well require highly proprietary equipment which ought be "firewalled" in some way, at least from the immediate/ accessing/ paying user, we cannot say the situation is any better with say the ubiquitous Intel ethernet hardware and firmware stack... pot meet kettle).

>Our primary hurdle in the medium term is hardware, since the software is, from a design perspective afaict, mostly a solved problem ... proof by result still pending of course :)

Yes.  Weeks ago, I concluded that Starlink was probably using a "phased-array" IC for the ground station, so that the beam could be electronically steered.   (The same IC that is being used for the Walabot sophisticated 'stud-finder'.   https://www.amazon.com/Walabot-Imager-Android-Smartphones-Compatible/dp/B06Y29NXKK   )

  This is important, because they don't want the outputs of millions of such devices to be simultaneously emitted in ALL directions.  THAT is a major advance, and it makes what they are trying to do practical.            Jim Bell



  
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