I hope they ship soon. I preordered Starlink and put down the deposit in Feb 2021. Still nothing.
There's a number of places that are not out of capacity and if you put in the "right" street address it'll take you to the immediate full price payment order page.
the problem with terrible oversubscription on geostationary consumer grade vsat services is based on the fact that raw transponder kHz on a geostationary satellite is extremely expensive.
starlink appear to be taking a very different perspective since they absolutely know about the abysmal reputation of things like viasat/hughesnet/wildblue/etc in the consumer-facing ISP space, and won't ever let it go that way. because it would be a brand name killer.
If one fully understands the economics of geostationary it helps to better understand the tech behind starlink. I don't rule out the possibility that it goes bankrupt and ends up in a situation like the 2nd corporate incarnation of iridium, but the tech works great.
The fact that they just released a more expensive terminal to me means that they are trying to tackle the enterprise market where the cost per bit is significantly higher than with consumers, and those users will for sure get priority over consumers. It also means they are losing money too fast and they needed to at least have a solution that will potentially have higher returns in the short-term.
I agree the tech works great for what it is, but I also don't think it's been out anywhere near long enough for people to make judgements about how well it works. I don't think we will have enough longevity data on the terminal for at least a couple more years, so it's not clear if performance will degrade or if the motor will seize due to whether.
I think the users that got in now are having a great honeymoon period, but I don't think this will last, and we should not be comparing it to existing, mature services.
Maybe it’s related to your location. I’m in Vancouver.
Musk seems to have figured out that he can collect deposits for way more people than he could possibly deliver to, leveraging it as free operating cash. The cybertruck is a great example - millions of people gave him money for something that hasn't left prototype stage and will never be produced because it couldn't possibly meet federal vehicle standards in the US or Europe.
Starlink seems to be more hype too like his HyperLoop.
Even the video description is incorrect.
> Note the driver blows the horn as he enters the intersection. He obviously cannot stop the car. Probable FSD or Autopilot crash.
FSD/Autopilot does not stay on or prevent human interaction. Slamming on the brake turns it off, even assuming was on. This is a "unintended press of the accelerator pedal" type crash. Human error, and actually a good argument for why removing the human from the loop would be a good idea.
> Starlink seems to be more hype too like his HyperLoop.
Starlink is serving over 100,000 customers with good service all paying $100/month. Hardly hype.
Additionally, we see just how a real human reacts to a real present danger: confusion. After identifying the threat the pedestrian instinctively runs into the path of the vehicle, just to run.
I'm not aware of Tesla specifics, but i've previously read several stories on HN of car computers who wouldn't let the driver be in control. As a computer person who has moderate understanding of mechanics/electronics, i believe unless you have a physical kill switch to take control back from the computer, there is literally no way software can be safe enough that even in a crash you can regain control.
I mean apparently you've been around for a while on these forums. You're surely educated that software can never be trusted, especially with life-endangering situations.
That can't happen. People misremember things when they're in a panicked state. Or they're exaggerating to defend themselves. The instant you even slightly tug on the wheel autopilot and autosteer of any kind will disengage and revert to a traffic aware cruise control state (with an audible chime). And any application of the brake disengages autopilot/autosteer and also automatic cruise control with an audible chime.
> I mean apparently you've been around for a while on these forums. You're surely educated that software can never be trusted, especially with life-endangering situations.
I'm not sure what you're saying. People aren't "trusting" it yet which is why it's easy to disengage and override.
Yes yes i've heard that one before. I've had many bugs "that can't happen" over the course of my lifetime. Fortunately none of them involved a car so i'm still around to talk about it. A few years ago, somebody would have laughed at the idea of Boeing producing fallible equipment, especially since we as a species have decades of experience of air travel. Now would you still say it's unthinkable that Boeing could produce faulty hardware/software?
A link that gets posted on HN quite often contains many such bugs "can't happen" bugs, that aren't even caused by AI : https://beza1e1.tuxen.de/lore/index.html
I also remember some threads about high-range medical equipment (in actual hospitals) killing people due to software bugs.
> And any application of the brake disengages autopilot/autosteer and also automatic cruise control with an audible chime.
Is that a physical kill switch that triggers a sensor to produce an alert/chime? Or does the sensor ask politely the computer who actually controls the car to disable the autopilot? In the latter case, i know of no way to make this safe: for example what happens if the sensors requesting human control back die, short-circuit, or otherwise malfunctions? Or if the program enters certain kinds of memory violations? Or any other software/hardware fault?
> I'm not sure what you're saying.
I'm saying i've seen enough bad engineering (not always, but sometimes along with bad faith) across all fields i've been even remotely involved in. And i'm saying i don't even remotely trust the >100 micro-controllers you find in a modern car whose schematics and source-code we can't inspect. I mean i don't fully trust mechanical hardware either, but at least with it symptoms and failure modes can be easily reproduced and debugged.
And i'm definitely saying i would never ever trust a machine-learning algorithm with life-making decisions. More on this topic:
- James Mickens at Usenix on why AI is usually a terrible idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajGX7odA87k
- jwz's blog (another HN favorite) is also full of examples of AI failures ; a fun harmless example: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2021/06/using-ritual-magic-to-trap-...