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Comment by sschueller | Hacker News Reader

I am curious how long Startlink will remain in beta. Looking at FSD at Tesla it has always been in beta and will probably never leave beta. The next question is if it is acceptable to sell a product to customers that will never be what it was promised to be. So in essence I sell a promise of a product but never really deliver since you know, it's still beta.

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StarLink hasn’t even filled enough of their constellation for global coverage so calling it beta is quite reasonable. Many major features are still missing such as the ability to use StarLink with RV’s. If they still call it beta in 5 years then sure, but for now customers should realize it’s not ready to be their only form of internet access.

FSD isn’t ready either. I don’t know if it will ever be but as much as people harp on their marking of self driving, calling it beta is more realistic.

Even if it never advanced beyond its current state, Starlink would still be a massive improvement over what I have now. My internet looks like the "farm" example in the article, and I'm only a 1:15 drive to downtown SF. I'll take it, beta or not.

Tesla and Starlink / SpaceX are two entirely different businesses. FSD is a feature of a car, where Starlink is an entire business — it’s not just an “experimental feature”, it’s an entire business out of itself.

Secondly, FSD having bugs could cause actual deaths, which is not the case for Starlink.

I would be surprised if Starlink would still be in beta in 2023.

> Secondly, FSD having bugs could cause actual deaths, which is not the case for Starlink.

One of the issues reported with Starlink in its current state seems to be overheating receivers. If those where buggy you would have a few burned down houses instead of complaints about unreliable internet in the summer due to automatic shutdown.

Don’t these satellites evaporate in the atmosphere before they reach the ground?

You need a specialized receiver / satellite dish on the ground to connect with them.

That’s fair enough, but I still don’t consider it as problematic as autonomous driving; it’s more the equivalent of a microwave overheating, and it’s fairly easy to build in a fail safe for this. As a matter of fact, as far as I understand, the receivers actually shut down when they overheat.

This problem is not nearly as big as solving autonomous driving, in terms of “how to prevent deaths”.

Starlink in beta does exactly what it is supposed to do: you get internet, and possibly with a better connection than in the final version, because of the limited number of users.

With FSD beta, the car doesn't fully drives itself.

I have absolutely no problem with the first scenario. It is not available to everyone, but for those who do, they get what they pay for. The second is more dubious, you don't get what you paid for, but promise, later, you will.

If starlink doesn't satisfy, you can stop paying them or get a refund.

If the autopilot kills you, the market doesnt have a mechanism to make you whole again.

Getting FSD out of beta requires significant technological advances.

Getting Starlink out of beta, to oversimplify a bit, mostly just requires more launches.

It shouldn't matter if they called beta forever or whatever.

As consumer you should never believe what the company promise anyway.

I would evaluate it myself or refer to trusted third party reviewer based on what it can actually do right now not what it may become.

Maybe beta is just part of the name that we've all just misunderstood the meaning of? Maybe the next version will be called BetaMax

yes assume its just a part of name.

Ask Microsoft first. As far as I can tell Windows 7 was they first 'good' OS since DOS.

That title should go to Windows 2000. I still miss it.

In specific to Tesla: they have found that this exact business model works astonishingly well with their customer base, so I can't imagine they'll have any reason to stop without some kind of backlash to their bottom line.

RE: the problem in general, I don't have any specific answer, but this also relates directly to the "Early Access" program that Steam and games in general have, along with the whole "Day 1 DLC" that may or may not be there for you. It's becoming pretty endemic to our society and I do think it's just because _it works incredibly well_ on us.

Google was one of the frontrunners, Gmail was in beta for 5 years

And still doesn't support fractional word search.

And feels like it still is.

It's a great funding strategy: sell the MVP to get the funds to develop the full product (either directly or by showing the product is worth dedicating resources to). It also enables the most important element from agile development: early and frequent feedback from all stakeholders.

Imagine an alternative world SpaceX had launched a fleet of rockets to bring the constellation up in a couple days while shipping receivers to customers; only to then find out that the satellites reflect too much light and the receivers are too temperate sensitive. The slow beta program is just the better development approach

Day 1 DLC is a consequence of spinning shiny discs is it not? They have to finalize a version to send to disc manufacturing months in advance of actual release date just like any typical physical goods manufacturing/distribution. There's clearly lots of work that can and is done on the code during that shiny disc making period. So it stands to reason that what ever the code is on the shiny disc once released is so antiquated it is not even worth the plastic is stamped in.

Do digital release only games suffer from Day 1 DLC like this? I'm not a gamer, so I have no experience with this.

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