I'm actually a huge fan of "unlimited slow speeds" as a falloff, instead of a cliff.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That's kind of my point, ISPs use that max speed in their advertising when it isn't really relevant, especially if it hits your cap in a minute or two.
It is relevant, though. I have 1.2 Gbps down with a 2 TB monthly cap. I've never hit the monthly cap even once, but by your standard I have "1.2 Gbps down for 3 hours, 42 minutes".
But that doesn't change the reality that it matters to me that a 20 GB video that a friend took at my wedding downloads in just 2 minutes rather than the ~30 minutes it would take if I had a 100 Mbps connection.
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.
More datapoints in USD (Chile) from checking various companies:
150GB-200GB ~15 USD
400GB-450GB ~19-20 USD
Unlimited (without throttling) ~21-27 USD
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.
You should shop around! Some of the MVNOs are offering unlimited fast data at a similar price these days, and something similar to what you have now for cheaper.
Visible here, as well. I've been paying $25.00 per month, flat (no extra fees/taxes) for years.
It's perhaps worth noting for others that there are 3 different tiers of service with Visible, ranging from $25 to $45 -- although all 3 are "unlimited."
(I can't tell the difference between them, myself, with my phone in my use.)
I second this! I switched to mint recently. They are offering unlimited data including hotspot for $15/mo for up to a year if you prepay. I think then it goes to their standard rate which is $30/mo for unlimited, or $15/mo for 5gb.
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.
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 still 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!
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.
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.
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?"
At least it's 2GB/day now. And my 5G roaming is off...
Roaming in some countries is like $10,000/gigabyte...
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?
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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 :)
The first modem that I owned 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.
I bought a cheap 1200 and then once I had use for it I saved up for a USR 14.4 with a shiny extruded aluminum case. At one point I was sharing that with two roommates using SLIP and surplussed Cisco coaxial NICs.
Ok, I’m not normally one to be the pedantic bits/bytes guy, but if you’re gonna go and make a bit/byte “clarification” you need to get the annotation correct or you'll just confuse everyone.
It’s 500kb (small b for bits) and 62.5kB(capital/big B for bytes).
People always use bits for connectivity. 62.5kB/sec -- maybe really 55-60kB/sec downloaded. Or 18 seconds to get a megabyte.
This is simultaneously fast (on my 14400 bps modem that I spent the most time "waiting for downloading", I was used to 12-13 minutes per megabyte vs. 18 seconds here) and slow (the google homepage is >1MB, so until you have resources cached you're waiting tens of seconds).
It would be nice if everything were just a touch more efficient.
I end up transferring 940kB (with a lot of blocking cranked up). Typing "hello" in the search bar takes it up to 1MB. Then the first page of search results is another 1.3MB.
Now, I assume all of this would start working before it's all transferred. But we're still talking about tens of seconds of transfer at 500kbit/sec.
(And Google at least acts like they care about bandwidth a little. So many 15megabyte pages out there...)
Unfortunately, the 56kbps internet was a lot more usable. I've been on 256kbps cellular connections (T-Mobile free international roaming) and it works, but it's pretty bad. Everything takes way more data these days, and nobody thinks about slow connections when writing software so there are a ton of overly aggressive timeouts and bad UI that assume operations won't take more than few seconds.
Data rates are almost always multiplied by powers of 10, because they're based on symbol/clock rates which tend to be related to powers of 10. There's no address lines, etc, to push us to powers of 2 (though we may get a few powers of 2 from having a power of 2 number of possible symbols).
So telco rates which are multiples of 56000 or 64000; baud rates which are multiples of 300; ethernet rates which are mostly just powers of 10; etc etc etc.
Of course, there's occasional weird stuff, but usually things have a lot of factors of 5 in there and seem more "decimal-ish" than "binary-ish".
No, not 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.
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 every single month we use it, 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.
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.
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?
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!)
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?
You can get very cheap IoT plans but if you tried reselling IoT as esims for consumers, the carriers would kill it?
So yeah - Starlink to mobile is actually the only viable way that routes around this problem?
(((email in profile if you’re cuckoo enough like me and want to start a self service’d throttled mvno)))
Unfortunately their plan is an IoT plan “Not Intended for Phones or Tablets” [0]
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..! :)
To me, the fact that the restriction exists is a proof of the demand for this.
There is something like this but twice the prive in Finland https://www.moi.fi/laitenetti . Can't make outgoing calls but there are pay as you internet call out services for that occaddional use case.
Sorry yes - I think it does. Starlink sats can already offer 5G service directly to mobile phones (from the sky!!)
And there are other comments here talking about this specifically - how unlimited bandwidth throttled plans are actually useful and would be great to have.
I assume they want to attract as many customers has possible while 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.
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.
Not fair - Google Search is under constant and escalating attack. If we replaced current Google Search with the 2000s implementation it would be immediately dominated by spam and SEO hacks. Simple PageRank doesn't work anymore.
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'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 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.
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 every single month we use it, versus paying a little extra for the few times we go over.
And now, even if you did go over 50GB, you get 50 more GB to use at the same price. If you barely went over before, then you will likely not use up the extra 50GB, and therefore are paying less than before for the same usage.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
I haven't done a video call on it but it does work for youtube. It's best to pause a video at the start but it buffers and plays just fine. Blocky but certainly watchable.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A few details/complications:
- 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
- host PC is on a wired fiber connection
- 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: https://satellitemap.space/
>There are distinct large latency spikes every 30ish minutes, which I think is due to the dish switching between different satellites.
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.
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.
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.
I just checked my Starlink app and if I wanted to downgrade mine it says the change would be effective at the beginning of the next monthly billing period.
So looks like you can downgrade every month and upgrade any time. Sounds fair to me.
Thanks for this. I now withdraw my previous objections to the change. If we blow past the 100Gb, just upgrade, then remember to downgrade before the next month.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Comments about Elon on HN have become exhaustingly cringe; dripping with devout derision, reeking of righteous reproach, and smacking of sanctimonious seething.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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. :)
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.
I actually prefer the economic system where providers don't have to care about the use cases and we're able to use the exchange of money for services to get things. I doubt Subaru cares about a yuppie couple going on a road trip to the redwoods. They just want my money. That's the sort of relationship I want with most vendors.
If Subaru started talking to me about how much they like that I take road trips with their cars I'd probably switch to a different vendor.
Subaru literally tells me they like that I take road trips with their cars, and offer me swag to share other swag with people while I travel around. “Subaru Ambassador” program.
Well, that's opt-in, right? I don't think it should be illegal for people to have relationships with vendors. I just prefer our current system where vendor relationships don't require anyone to care.
Fascism isn't just American. If you're going to be pedantic, at least be accurate.
My point: supporting an American fascist normalizes fascism everywhere
Elon replied with 100 emoji to a post that said “If White men become a minority, we will be slaughtered. Remember, if non-Whites openly hate White men while White men hold a collective majority, then they will be 1000x times more hostile and cruel when they are a majority over Whites. White solidarity is the only way to survive.”
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 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.
As if Bezos is better. Elon has a much higher slope but he’s got a head start to catch up on, before they’re all hunting humans for sport on Ellison’s private island.
you're all over this thread seemingly trying to get someone to argue this point with you, or perhaps just to prove how nuts Elon is, as if people don't already know that, for example, from the time he did a nazi salute in public to a crowd
Bezos worst offense is meeting with Trump and donating to his campaign (and if you follow the leftist ideology, being a billionaire).
But based on personal experience with some very wealthy people, I truly believe they are just out of touch with the real world to understand what they are doing politically. Imagine if your days could be spent doing all the things you ever could wish, you would most likely not even bother reading stuff like reddit or HN, and certainly won't have time to look into any snippet of news in detail.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
Being a Starlink customer, to me, has a straight line connection to enabling that man to do all the things he does.
> I think to assume that humans are these monolithic, logically consistent entities is to badly misunderstand humanity.
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.
> It's logically consistent for the OP to be aware that Musk is aiding internet connectivity in Iran but still oppose giving him money.
Why not flip this on its head? It's also logically consistent for people to be aware that Elon has done things they disagree with and still choose to buy his products.
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".
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
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.
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.
As the other poster said, low effort reply. You can start with the Bam earthquake and work your way to the loss of Radio Farda. You beloved Musk put an end to the Middle Eastern Broadcasting Network.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 should be offended. Obviously that's not ground truth..
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Totally the same. $1 is $1, and it can go to saving those very lives you’re talking about. Put your money where your mouth is - otherwise you just want to virtue signal with my tax dollars.
I do, through my tax dollars. And the amount of money that was DOGEd was literally couch cushion change on the scale of the federal budget. And not only did those cuts directly lead to deaths but weakened US soft power all around the world, letting China step in.
China’s soft power play yielded returns: ports, minerals, oil, factories, customers for their exports.
The only Americans benefiting from the existing aid scheme are the network of lobbyists and NGOs.
As I said upthread, if you’re that motivated, donate $500 to a high-impact charity and you’ll do far more good for people on the ground than what your taxes were doing at USAID.
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.
I'm sorry but that's just straight up evil behavior.
It's not just a matter of funding, but infrastructure in place (much of which constituted relationships with local communities) that Marco Rubio ordered dismantled immediately.
My concern is that man, 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.
Where are they going to go? Honest question, because capital flight is always a threat that never materializes. Turns out the actual pillars of wealth can't easily be extracted out of the country.
Yes and the seeds have already been planted by the current US administration taking various financial stakes in public companies as a condition of corporate welfare.
Huge difference between taking an equity stake in a failing company and nationalizing a successful company. Either way, those seeds were planted well before this admin, though this admin can be seen to have watered/tended them.
Those were just repaying the loans, having a stake in a company is completely different. It's not hard to push that further and in more creative ways too.
Even better, this is a policy that has been done by multiple Presidents. All you need know is an executive willing to do it as it's clearly in the President's power to dictate commerce if they can force the federal government to take equity in various companies at any time (even better if said company relies on US welfare to exist).
I don't see this as a good analogy, because the financial crisis bailout appeared to save the companies from shuttering, which is not what happened under the current admin.
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).
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.
Development is slow, but I've been happily using it since RiF was killed.
Counterpoint, HN is notoriously hard to use on mobile (still better than some, but it's clearly designed for desktop, and not super responsive).
But agreed, that's independent of the slim nature of the webpage (which is still possible with a good mobile UX).
Sometimes I manage to hit the updoot or downdoot buttons incorrectly, but that error happens so rarely that I'm amazed at my success.
Responsiveness is very good, as well. Loading is lightning quick in all but the very worst network environments.
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.
No it's not, it's perfect on Vanadium with the zoom set to 125%. Much better than some bloated Javascript monstrosity.
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.
(1) https://www.cbc.ca/lite/news
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.
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.
So telcos can advertise "Up to 200Mbps" for their package.
But then if they have a 2GB cap, they also need to say, "Caps at 80 seconds of usage".
Because that's what you're paying for at that speed, 80 seconds of usage per month.
Sure, you're not always (or indeed never) doing 200Mbps, but then you're not getting the speed you paid for.
But that doesn't change the reality that it matters to me that a 20 GB video that a friend took at my wedding downloads in just 2 minutes rather than the ~30 minutes it would take if I had a 100 Mbps connection.
Your cap is over 150 times that equivalent. If you had an 80 second hard cap, you couldn't even download that 20GB video.
Or am I way off and you hit the cap every month?
150GB-200GB ~15 USD
400GB-450GB ~19-20 USD
Unlimited (without throttling) ~21-27 USD
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.
It's perhaps worth noting for others that there are 3 different tiers of service with Visible, ranging from $25 to $45 -- although all 3 are "unlimited."
(I can't tell the difference between them, myself, with my phone in my use.)
Not sponsored or anything, just a happy customer.
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 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.
At least it's 2GB/day now. And my 5G roaming is off...
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?
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.
They started billing me but I never received a sat dish.
And their support Website is a chatbot :-(.
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.
> ...
> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.
0: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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.
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...
Ok, I’m not normally one to be the pedantic bits/bytes guy, but if you’re gonna go and make a bit/byte “clarification” you need to get the annotation correct or you'll just confuse everyone.
It’s 500kb (small b for bits) and 62.5kB(capital/big B for bytes).
This is simultaneously fast (on my 14400 bps modem that I spent the most time "waiting for downloading", I was used to 12-13 minutes per megabyte vs. 18 seconds here) and slow (the google homepage is >1MB, so until you have resources cached you're waiting tens of seconds).
It would be nice if everything were just a touch more efficient.
Now, I assume all of this would start working before it's all transferred. But we're still talking about tens of seconds of transfer at 500kbit/sec.
(And Google at least acts like they care about bandwidth a little. So many 15megabyte pages out there...)
We lived for years on 56kbps, granted the Internet was different back then, but we'd still "use" it, download stuff, etc.
Or even better, 62.5KiB (for kibibyte)
Well, we can’t know if Starlink’s marketing team used 2^10 or 10^3, and since it’d inflate their numbers I guess the latter.
So telco rates which are multiples of 56000 or 64000; baud rates which are multiples of 300; ethernet rates which are mostly just powers of 10; etc etc etc.
Of course, there's occasional weird stuff, but usually things have a lot of factors of 5 in there and seem more "decimal-ish" than "binary-ish".
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!)
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?
You can get very cheap IoT plans but if you tried reselling IoT as esims for consumers, the carriers would kill it?
So yeah - Starlink to mobile is actually the only viable way that routes around this problem?
(((email in profile if you’re cuckoo enough like me and want to start a self service’d throttled mvno)))
[0] https://bsky.app/profile/greg.technology/post/3mbmwsytnyc23
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.
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..! :)
To me, the fact that the restriction exists is a proof of the demand for this.
[0] https://embeddedworks.net/product/wsim0331-sub/
And there are other comments here talking about this specifically - how unlimited bandwidth throttled plans are actually useful and would be great to have.
Also as has been noted, in some markets they do compete on price: https://restofworld.org/2025/starlink-cheaper-internet-afric...
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/innovation-at-amazon/what-i...
I still think this is mostly a positive change, but it is a bummer that the service plans keep changing.
You do you, I guess.
> we don't regularly go over 50Gb
I mean, you did.
And now, even if you did go over 50GB, you get 50 more GB to use at the same price. If you barely went over before, then you will likely not use up the extra 50GB, and therefore are paying less than before for the same usage.
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?
Youtubing how to deal with a snakebite might come in more handy.
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.
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.
You won't be in crispy 720p or 1080p, but you can still talk to other people.
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.
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.
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.
A few details/complications:
- 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
- host PC is on a wired fiber connection
- 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: https://satellitemap.space/
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.
I put some more details on my blog if you're interested in power specs or DNS options on the router, etc. https://bitcreed.us/bitblog/starlink-on-the-road
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.
So looks like you can downgrade every month and upgrade any time. Sounds fair to me.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
And nobody here cares about American politics, we have enough of our own problems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_in_the_Russian-Ukrain...
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.If Subaru started talking to me about how much they like that I take road trips with their cars I'd probably switch to a different vendor.
In fact, sometimes I wish I had chosen a profession where I didn’t need an internet connection at all.
> White people are a rapidly diminishing minority of global population
Which unless you have any extra context, according to me does not entail:
> we need white solidarity to survive because non-white people are a threat to white men
Elon replied with 100 emoji to a post that said “If White men become a minority, we will be slaughtered. Remember, if non-Whites openly hate White men while White men hold a collective majority, then they will be 1000x times more hostile and cruel when they are a majority over Whites. White solidarity is the only way to survive.”
You don't need to buy from any of those people.
Enjoy your part in creating misery for people who just happen to not be white.
I disagree that Bezos & Elon are comparably bad.
But based on personal experience with some very wealthy people, I truly believe they are just out of touch with the real world to understand what they are doing politically. Imagine if your days could be spent doing all the things you ever could wish, you would most likely not even bother reading stuff like reddit or HN, and certainly won't have time to look into any snippet of news in detail.
Musk on the other hand, is mentally ill.
Like it or not, Persians love him.
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.
Being a Starlink customer, to me, has a straight line connection to enabling that man to do all the things he does.
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.
Why not flip this on its head? It's also logically consistent for people to be aware that Elon has done things they disagree with and still choose to buy his products.
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
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.
The same guy could help some people and kick others in the dirt at the same time.
The same Persians in a western country would be called a threat to western culture by parties Musk endorses
Thank you for bringing value to this comments section.
Him or any of his companies will never see a penny from me.
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.
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.
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 leave it to others to fight that fight, but I'd take any word.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I do, through my tax dollars. And the amount of money that was DOGEd was literally couch cushion change on the scale of the federal budget. And not only did those cuts directly lead to deaths but weakened US soft power all around the world, letting China step in.
The only Americans benefiting from the existing aid scheme are the network of lobbyists and NGOs.
As I said upthread, if you’re that motivated, donate $500 to a high-impact charity and you’ll do far more good for people on the ground than what your taxes were doing at USAID.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-documentary...
https://ph.ucla.edu/news-events/news/research-finds-more-14-...
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-documentary...
https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-shutdown-has-led-to-hund...
This one is a PDF, so warning:
https://www.medschool.umaryland.edu/media/som/news/news-logo...
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.
I'm sorry but that's just straight up evil behavior.
If the funding cuts were so critical why have other wealthy countries or individuals not stepped in to fund them?
Are they all evil too?
You gonna throw your computer away?
Some of the investments were more national security related and a lot of it was done through the DoD which has a history of this too.
It’s unusual but not entirely unprecedented.
[0]: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2009171282030653877