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Joined 5 months ago
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Cake day: May 7th, 2024

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  • No starlink alternative

    Of course you get downvoted. Because people don’t know. Let me try to help educate y’all.

    In many rural areas in the US there is NO (as in zero, nada, zilch) cable, DSL or even mobile/LTE. Nothing. I know because I live in one of those areas. So your internet options are:

    1. Read books and talk to people
    2. A traditional satellite provider like Hughesnet or Viasat, where you’ll have 10 GB daytime MONTHLY quotas, 800ms latency and extremely poor service.
    3. Twiddle your thumbs and call it twidder.

    Until Starlink came along I could not work remotely, stream any content or game. Despite being usually 20 MBps down, Hughesnet was so high latency that page loads were usually 10-20 seconds or more. A lot of things that had short timeouts simply didn’t work. So yeah, I self-flaggilate every time I pay the bill but Starlink has allowed us to have a normal internet life.









  • This is the better future?

    Are you clothed and eat enough? Do live in a place that is basically comfortable? Do you never really fear for your safety? Do you have freedom of expression and choices and opportunities in the world?

    On average, yes, it is better than the past, especially for people in North America and Europe. I could list all the reasons why, for me personally… like the fact that I’m not beaten or killed for my gender identity and that I can marry my partner who can have a successful career despite their race. But I suggest as an exercise you consider how your life would be in, say, 1924. If you can’t come up with anything, huge congrats on your privilege.

    It’s easy to forget what it could be like and when we are relatively comfortable and complacent to get into the mindset of complaining that we only have a 55" TV and can’t afford to buy a house. It’s easy to forget that others don’t even have that level of comfort and that but for lucky circumstance we could be that “other”.