Horse - you dislike Starlink. We get that. But so far you’ve made a series of strident statements which get rapidly demolished. Terrible latency? Nope. Can’t do meetings? Nope. Slower than 5G? Nope. Everyone is getting FTTP (Stop and Think about the practicalities of that one). Nope. Can’t work on a train. Nope.
Starlink may turn into a cul-de-sac technology. But here and now it offers genuinely fast and usable connectivity to people who literally have no other options. Where you insist the other options actually do exist and actually are faster and better actually.
I don’t work in the industry. You appear to do. Which means you know more that I do. But keep posting things that are demonstrably wrong in the real world because you’ve set your mind against it. Why is that? In my industry I start with the facts on the ground and build a narrative to explain them. Not decide on the narrative and be selective and manipulate of the “facts” to prove me right
Starlink's capabilities don't matter a jot if you are a non-MAGA government, or in a business which in any way competes with any of Musk's. Because you cannot rely on the service.
And I'd just say I find your constant hyping of Musk's products to be very much against what I thought were your values and morals.
How am I constantly hyping? Some products, yes. Partially. My latest Just Get A Tesla video slags off "FSD Capability" and describes it as "a con". Am I hyping FSD Capability? I'm saying that Tesla are being outrageous selling this thing which they know doesn't work. Is that me hyping them?
I've repeatedly poked a stick at autonomous vehicles - I fully expect they to get banned after the first nasty automation crash. I think the robot thing is absurd. I've attacked Neuralink.
What I don't do is adjust the facts to match what you insist should be "values and morals". Horse laid down a list of things that Starlink cannot do and was factually wrong. Stating that is neither hyping nor not hyping - it is what it is.
My morality is my morality. When I was younger and more strident I drank the cool-aid where my morality should be everyone's morality. I grew out of that long ago - and had to change party to best reflect that. What I think isn't necessarily what you think. Why do you think that what you think should be inviolate and adopted by others? If I want a lecture on morality I could go to church. Oh year, I stopped doing that as well...
What's the title of your channel again? Is it "Don't get a Tesla"?
No?
And my post commented on the technical merits of Starlink being pointless given the political shenanigans that Musk is performing with it.
And as for morality and values: wait until Musk and MAGA come after gay people. Or bisexuals. See my point now?
It's a car. It's not a man.
Starlink is a service. Should Starlink abruptly get switched off then I would have to revert back to shonky slow options. Are you saying that because of a theoretical event maybe in the future that shonky and slow is my best option now?
And MAGA are *already* going after anyone who isn't white Christian and straight. So what? Jenrick was foaming on about straight white Christians the other day. If I want to pay attention to homophobia I don't need to bother with MAGA.
What's your point? Which technologies / companies / political platforms are morally acceptable to you? I converted to Apple a couple of years ago - does that make me liable for the Uighurs too?
The car is giving the man much of his power. And he is using that power in ways that are, in my view, very bad. I'd hope that was your view as well. People promoting his brands are helping him. You are doing so - and I guess you're making a little money out of it.
And your comparison of Jenrick with what is going on in America is ludicrous and wrong.
My point was not about whether it is acceptable to *me*. My point - as I stated above - is that if you are a country or organisation that might annoy Musk for some reason, then any of his services are unreliable. That will be a major drag against the use of those services anywhere outside MAGAland.
We disagree but that is ok. Yes I'm promoting multiple Musk brands. Do you think Musk cares one way or another? The notion that a consumer boycott will sink him is for the birds - its having an impact on sales, but its not the collapse that some are hoping for. Anyone see the sales numbers in February here? Shows that the bigger drops in a few markets in Europe are not universal which means little impact - especially on a company whose bonkers share price is based on AI and automation hopium rather than reality.
As for Jenrick, he said that criminal justice was biased against "Christians" and "Straight White Men". We call out dog whistle racism when its MAGA doing it, but don't want to call it out when its the Tories? And you talk about morality?
This just makes my point. "Morality" talks of absolutes. Right and wrong. I've used that kind of language in the past which was wrong. With very very few exceptions there are no absolutes - only shades of grey. What we have here is one shade of grey addressing another shade of grey and saying "ha, you are grey"
Well the fact is you use cars and services that are provided by a company whose main shareholder has been discovered to be a facist loving ketamine addicted billionaire.
You also make videos (for which you earn money and seem to derive benefits from) that promote those products.
Now it’s up to you as to whether you continue to do so but given your previous posts I suspect an accurate description for you would be hypocrite
He's a kethead, without question.
Is he a fascist? Really? What's the evidence of it - and don't say the salute.
If you actually examine Musk's positions they are often at the opposite end of the spectrum from fascism. Musk is a free speech absolutist. That's an absurd position btw, but fascists don't want free speech, they want to stop free speech. Musk wants industry to be unencumbered by state regulation. Fascism shackles industry to deliver what the state wants. Musk thinks there's lots of penpusher bureaucrats and whole departments that can be done away with. Fascism regulates every aspect of life to the nth degree. Musk wants more migration. MAGA and especially some of the far right parties he has hyped want zero or negative migration.
"Musk is a fascist" doesn't hold up to basic scrutiny once you drop the emotional response and actually look at it.
He's retweeted far-right accounts promoting civil war in the UK. He was reintrointruced to Trump's canpaign by Peter Thiel, an open techno-fascist, who is the kingmaker, and also promoted fascist ideologues like Curtis Yarvin to Vance.
He was named by his father after a character in a Nazi rocket scientists novel about a benign dictator who took over Mars. I would say the signs are pretty clear.
He has been ramping Yaxley-Lennon which made me very angry. But he isn't ramping it because he supports that mindset. SYL wants to remove migrants. Musk is in America saying that migration is a good thing (which enrages many MAGA activists).
So basically your argument is he is ramping right wing people for the lols not because he agrees with their viewpoint.
While mine is that Trump is posting those item because he does agree with their viewpoint
My argument is that he is ramping people who he thinks have been censored - SYL, AfD etc etc. It's bloody stupid, but it isn't fascism.
Do you think he gave Nazi salutes?
No, though I have been hugely entertained by the various side by side video clips. We don't even need to pull apart the mechanics of the salute and the very odd angle he was pulling vs the ramrod straight execution of the nazis doing it.
The proof that so many people offer for Musk being a fascist is those salutes. You yourself appear to have fallen back onto them as the last redoubt of an argument that falls apart under scrutiny.
Go back to my list of Musk vs Fascism positions. Discuss those point by point - those are relevant and would be whether or not a toddler moron has bounced around a stage like a 5 year old doung dodgy salutes, thumping the dias in excitement and doing absurd flag planting gestures complete with sounds.
"But he did a salute". Yeah. Harry dressed up as one. Cosplaying fascism doesn't make you actually fascist.
Interestingly I think Musk is a fascist - or maybe proro-fascist is a better description given he hasn't really got going yet. But I think the salute is entirely irrelevant and misleading. Far more important are Algakirk's list of 14 indicators, most of which I think Trump and Musk are ticking to a greater or lesser degree.
So the salute argument is pointless and ultimately wrong. You can find lots of examples of people we know are not fascists doing similar salutes and of course there are plenty of examples of people who we would happily class as fascists who have never been photographed making salutes. So it is rather daft to concentrate on this one irrelevant action.
I haven't seen a lot of videos ('photographed' is meaningless, of course people sometimes have an arm raised) of "people we know are not fascists doing similar salutes". What do you have in mind?
Of course the interpretation depends partly on the context, and on the views that the person is known to be promoting. But Musk clearly performed fascist-style salutes at that rally. Maybe he was so off his head that he didn't have a clue what he was doing, and accidentally did them while not in control of his arms or something, but I find that a bit far-fetched.
If you are basing it off the video then I think if a Nazi in Germany in the 1930s had given the Nazi salute in that manner they would probably have been shot for taking the piss.
What information do we think will be added by the Local Elections in a few weeks?
(Apart from that the Conservatives will be mining hopium and copium on a Brobdingnagian scale, given that they hold around 1000 from 1600 seats up for election if my numbers are correct.)
I've been canvassing quite intensively in Con/Lab/LD/Reform wards in Oxfordshire. They're quite hard to read, since "Nah, not Labour" might mean anything. But FWIW I think Lab's performance will be mediocre rather than awful, and Reform will do better than Tories. I think the spat among Reform MPs is completely passing most people by, though the preoccupation with that has ended the Reform momentum.
I would be shocked if Reform beat the Tories in Oxfordshire, here in Essex maybe but luckily for Kemi our local elections have been postponed this year until the new unitaries have been formed and the Mayor created next year
Horse - you dislike Starlink. We get that. But so far you’ve made a series of strident statements which get rapidly demolished. Terrible latency? Nope. Can’t do meetings? Nope. Slower than 5G? Nope. Everyone is getting FTTP (Stop and Think about the practicalities of that one). Nope. Can’t work on a train. Nope.
Starlink may turn into a cul-de-sac technology. But here and now it offers genuinely fast and usable connectivity to people who literally have no other options. Where you insist the other options actually do exist and actually are faster and better actually.
I don’t work in the industry. You appear to do. Which means you know more that I do. But keep posting things that are demonstrably wrong in the real world because you’ve set your mind against it. Why is that? In my industry I start with the facts on the ground and build a narrative to explain them. Not decide on the narrative and be selective and manipulate of the “facts” to prove me right
Starlink's capabilities don't matter a jot if you are a non-MAGA government, or in a business which in any way competes with any of Musk's. Because you cannot rely on the service.
And I'd just say I find your constant hyping of Musk's products to be very much against what I thought were your values and morals.
How am I constantly hyping? Some products, yes. Partially. My latest Just Get A Tesla video slags off "FSD Capability" and describes it as "a con". Am I hyping FSD Capability? I'm saying that Tesla are being outrageous selling this thing which they know doesn't work. Is that me hyping them?
I've repeatedly poked a stick at autonomous vehicles - I fully expect they to get banned after the first nasty automation crash. I think the robot thing is absurd. I've attacked Neuralink.
What I don't do is adjust the facts to match what you insist should be "values and morals". Horse laid down a list of things that Starlink cannot do and was factually wrong. Stating that is neither hyping nor not hyping - it is what it is.
My morality is my morality. When I was younger and more strident I drank the cool-aid where my morality should be everyone's morality. I grew out of that long ago - and had to change party to best reflect that. What I think isn't necessarily what you think. Why do you think that what you think should be inviolate and adopted by others? If I want a lecture on morality I could go to church. Oh year, I stopped doing that as well...
What's the title of your channel again? Is it "Don't get a Tesla"?
No?
And my post commented on the technical merits of Starlink being pointless given the political shenanigans that Musk is performing with it.
And as for morality and values: wait until Musk and MAGA come after gay people. Or bisexuals. See my point now?
It's a car. It's not a man.
Starlink is a service. Should Starlink abruptly get switched off then I would have to revert back to shonky slow options. Are you saying that because of a theoretical event maybe in the future that shonky and slow is my best option now?
And MAGA are *already* going after anyone who isn't white Christian and straight. So what? Jenrick was foaming on about straight white Christians the other day. If I want to pay attention to homophobia I don't need to bother with MAGA.
What's your point? Which technologies / companies / political platforms are morally acceptable to you? I converted to Apple a couple of years ago - does that make me liable for the Uighurs too?
The car is giving the man much of his power. And he is using that power in ways that are, in my view, very bad. I'd hope that was your view as well. People promoting his brands are helping him. You are doing so - and I guess you're making a little money out of it.
And your comparison of Jenrick with what is going on in America is ludicrous and wrong.
My point was not about whether it is acceptable to *me*. My point - as I stated above - is that if you are a country or organisation that might annoy Musk for some reason, then any of his services are unreliable. That will be a major drag against the use of those services anywhere outside MAGAland.
We disagree but that is ok. Yes I'm promoting multiple Musk brands. Do you think Musk cares one way or another? The notion that a consumer boycott will sink him is for the birds - its having an impact on sales, but its not the collapse that some are hoping for. Anyone see the sales numbers in February here? Shows that the bigger drops in a few markets in Europe are not universal which means little impact - especially on a company whose bonkers share price is based on AI and automation hopium rather than reality.
As for Jenrick, he said that criminal justice was biased against "Christians" and "Straight White Men". We call out dog whistle racism when its MAGA doing it, but don't want to call it out when its the Tories? And you talk about morality?
This just makes my point. "Morality" talks of absolutes. Right and wrong. I've used that kind of language in the past which was wrong. With very very few exceptions there are no absolutes - only shades of grey. What we have here is one shade of grey addressing another shade of grey and saying "ha, you are grey"
Well the fact is you use cars and services that are provided by a company whose main shareholder has been discovered to be a facist loving ketamine addicted billionaire.
You also make videos (for which you earn money and seem to derive benefits from) that promote those products.
Now it’s up to you as to whether you continue to do so but given your previous posts I suspect an accurate description for you would be hypocrite
He's a kethead, without question.
Is he a fascist? Really? What's the evidence of it - and don't say the salute.
If you actually examine Musk's positions they are often at the opposite end of the spectrum from fascism. Musk is a free speech absolutist. That's an absurd position btw, but fascists don't want free speech, they want to stop free speech. Musk wants industry to be unencumbered by state regulation. Fascism shackles industry to deliver what the state wants. Musk thinks there's lots of penpusher bureaucrats and whole departments that can be done away with. Fascism regulates every aspect of life to the nth degree. Musk wants more migration. MAGA and especially some of the far right parties he has hyped want zero or negative migration.
"Musk is a fascist" doesn't hold up to basic scrutiny once you drop the emotional response and actually look at it.
His boss has just introduced a WHITE South African open door policy. You don't need to see him goose stepping arounnd in a 1942 Hugo Boss suit to get the idea.
Sure. But Musk is eulogising a visa system where people come to America from India, much to the horror of MAGA ideologues. Trump is not Musk is not Trump, despite their current marriage of convenience.
Only a relatively few people; and people carefully selected to be useful to he and his techbro friends.
Sure! So here is the direct comparison.
Did the Nazis selectively let Jews join the party and work their way up into positions of power? Does Yaxley-Lennon think that muslims should be allowed to stay here if they are doctors or senior business people?
Fascists do not want outsiders in their country. If you are advocating the merits of swarthy looking people of dubious religions coming to your country to make loads of money off working people, you're not a fascist.
The Nazis evolved during their time in power; they got worse. Who knows where Musk/Trump will end up politically?
If your argument is that anyone who is not Yaxley-Lennon is fine, then you're being silly. Musk wants immigration of a very small subset of people; either because they are like him (e.g. white South Africans), or because they are of use to him (engineers who will depress the pay of existing engineers).
Fascism is not Nazism, and the modern iteration, what you might call 'technofascism' is different still, but still very dangerous. Fascism has always operated by having an in group or groups, who the state is rigged to favour, and out groups it is rigged to attack. This can be defined by nationality, race, religion, class or politics. Often a combination of them that its leaders define as desirable or undesirable.
In the case of what we are seeing in the US, if it's not full-fat fascism it's functionally very similar and the main differences are being seeded in different eras. Musk etc have an outlook that for their version of the 'greater good' only people they deem as being of high value, matter. Hence why can simultaneously welcoming to very wealthy people from minorities and support their freedom, and yet unbelievably cruel to everyone else. If that sounds pretty fascist, it's because it is.
For someone who is "not a fascist", he says and does a lot of fascist things
To be fair, I think Musk is a fellow traveller who is primarily interested in money and power rather than what is commonly described as a “fascist”
If you take the formal definition of fascism (loosely summarised as the conflation of state and corporations in the exercise of power, with a veneer of militaristic national alien) rather than the common usage it’s much closer…
Horse - you dislike Starlink. We get that. But so far you’ve made a series of strident statements which get rapidly demolished. Terrible latency? Nope. Can’t do meetings? Nope. Slower than 5G? Nope. Everyone is getting FTTP (Stop and Think about the practicalities of that one). Nope. Can’t work on a train. Nope.
Starlink may turn into a cul-de-sac technology. But here and now it offers genuinely fast and usable connectivity to people who literally have no other options. Where you insist the other options actually do exist and actually are faster and better actually.
I don’t work in the industry. You appear to do. Which means you know more that I do. But keep posting things that are demonstrably wrong in the real world because you’ve set your mind against it. Why is that? In my industry I start with the facts on the ground and build a narrative to explain them. Not decide on the narrative and be selective and manipulate of the “facts” to prove me right
Starlink's capabilities don't matter a jot if you are a non-MAGA government, or in a business which in any way competes with any of Musk's. Because you cannot rely on the service.
And I'd just say I find your constant hyping of Musk's products to be very much against what I thought were your values and morals.
How am I constantly hyping? Some products, yes. Partially. My latest Just Get A Tesla video slags off "FSD Capability" and describes it as "a con". Am I hyping FSD Capability? I'm saying that Tesla are being outrageous selling this thing which they know doesn't work. Is that me hyping them?
I've repeatedly poked a stick at autonomous vehicles - I fully expect they to get banned after the first nasty automation crash. I think the robot thing is absurd. I've attacked Neuralink.
What I don't do is adjust the facts to match what you insist should be "values and morals". Horse laid down a list of things that Starlink cannot do and was factually wrong. Stating that is neither hyping nor not hyping - it is what it is.
My morality is my morality. When I was younger and more strident I drank the cool-aid where my morality should be everyone's morality. I grew out of that long ago - and had to change party to best reflect that. What I think isn't necessarily what you think. Why do you think that what you think should be inviolate and adopted by others? If I want a lecture on morality I could go to church. Oh year, I stopped doing that as well...
What's the title of your channel again? Is it "Don't get a Tesla"?
No?
And my post commented on the technical merits of Starlink being pointless given the political shenanigans that Musk is performing with it.
And as for morality and values: wait until Musk and MAGA come after gay people. Or bisexuals. See my point now?
It's a car. It's not a man.
Starlink is a service. Should Starlink abruptly get switched off then I would have to revert back to shonky slow options. Are you saying that because of a theoretical event maybe in the future that shonky and slow is my best option now?
And MAGA are *already* going after anyone who isn't white Christian and straight. So what? Jenrick was foaming on about straight white Christians the other day. If I want to pay attention to homophobia I don't need to bother with MAGA.
What's your point? Which technologies / companies / political platforms are morally acceptable to you? I converted to Apple a couple of years ago - does that make me liable for the Uighurs too?
The car is giving the man much of his power. And he is using that power in ways that are, in my view, very bad. I'd hope that was your view as well. People promoting his brands are helping him. You are doing so - and I guess you're making a little money out of it.
And your comparison of Jenrick with what is going on in America is ludicrous and wrong.
My point was not about whether it is acceptable to *me*. My point - as I stated above - is that if you are a country or organisation that might annoy Musk for some reason, then any of his services are unreliable. That will be a major drag against the use of those services anywhere outside MAGAland.
We disagree but that is ok. Yes I'm promoting multiple Musk brands. Do you think Musk cares one way or another? The notion that a consumer boycott will sink him is for the birds - its having an impact on sales, but its not the collapse that some are hoping for. Anyone see the sales numbers in February here? Shows that the bigger drops in a few markets in Europe are not universal which means little impact - especially on a company whose bonkers share price is based on AI and automation hopium rather than reality.
As for Jenrick, he said that criminal justice was biased against "Christians" and "Straight White Men". We call out dog whistle racism when its MAGA doing it, but don't want to call it out when its the Tories? And you talk about morality?
This just makes my point. "Morality" talks of absolutes. Right and wrong. I've used that kind of language in the past which was wrong. With very very few exceptions there are no absolutes - only shades of grey. What we have here is one shade of grey addressing another shade of grey and saying "ha, you are grey"
Well the fact is you use cars and services that are provided by a company whose main shareholder has been discovered to be a facist loving ketamine addicted billionaire.
You also make videos (for which you earn money and seem to derive benefits from) that promote those products.
Now it’s up to you as to whether you continue to do so but given your previous posts I suspect an accurate description for you would be hypocrite
He's a kethead, without question.
Is he a fascist? Really? What's the evidence of it - and don't say the salute.
If you actually examine Musk's positions they are often at the opposite end of the spectrum from fascism. Musk is a free speech absolutist. That's an absurd position btw, but fascists don't want free speech, they want to stop free speech. Musk wants industry to be unencumbered by state regulation. Fascism shackles industry to deliver what the state wants. Musk thinks there's lots of penpusher bureaucrats and whole departments that can be done away with. Fascism regulates every aspect of life to the nth degree. Musk wants more migration. MAGA and especially some of the far right parties he has hyped want zero or negative migration.
"Musk is a fascist" doesn't hold up to basic scrutiny once you drop the emotional response and actually look at it.
He's retweeted far-right accounts promoting civil war in the UK. He was reintrointruced to Trump's canpaign by Peter Thiel, an open techno-fascist, who is the kingmaker, and also promoted fascist ideologues like Curtis Yarvin to Vance.
He was named by his father after a character in a Nazi rocket scientists novel about a benign dictator who took over Mars. I would say the signs are pretty clear.
He has been ramping Yaxley-Lennon which made me very angry. But he isn't ramping it because he supports that mindset. SYL wants to remove migrants. Musk is in America saying that migration is a good thing (which enrages many MAGA activists).
So basically your argument is he is ramping right wing people for the lols not because he agrees with their viewpoint.
While mine is that Trump is posting those item because he does agree with their viewpoint
My argument is that he is ramping people who he thinks have been censored - SYL, AfD etc etc. It's bloody stupid, but it isn't fascism.
Do you think he gave Nazi salutes?
No, though I have been hugely entertained by the various side by side video clips. We don't even need to pull apart the mechanics of the salute and the very odd angle he was pulling vs the ramrod straight execution of the nazis doing it.
The proof that so many people offer for Musk being a fascist is those salutes. You yourself appear to have fallen back onto them as the last redoubt of an argument that falls apart under scrutiny.
Go back to my list of Musk vs Fascism positions. Discuss those point by point - those are relevant and would be whether or not a toddler moron has bounced around a stage like a 5 year old doung dodgy salutes, thumping the dias in excitement and doing absurd flag planting gestures complete with sounds.
"But he did a salute". Yeah. Harry dressed up as one. Cosplaying fascism doesn't make you actually fascist.
I think that labels (fascist, communist, anarchist, etc.) are only useful for people giving a casual glance at someone. Nearly everyone is more nuanced that a straightforward party programme. It's sufficient to say that Musk's policy preferences are alarmingly extreme for a close adviser to the President.
I'm not so concerned with the views of Musk himself. I am very concerned that he is driving neo-fascist (my chosen word which I think appropriate) politics in Europe using a broadcast platform he owns which has extensive reach into every society. My view is that we need a strong regulatory intervention wrt X - Musk and Trump are not pussyfooting in their attacks on democracy; we should not pussyfoot in our defence.
For example his appearance at an AFD rally in Germany one week before the election, and his lauding of their leader Alice Weidel.
@RochdalePioneers I do work in the industry and have worked with Starlink and others on deploying their technology to sites without other backhaul options. So I am talking purely from experience.
As I already said, I am not a Tesla or Starlink hater. I literally held Tesla stock for over five years, did very well out of it. Believed in what Elon and co were doing. I sold when he started becoming unhinged.
Nothing I have said is wrong.
I said the latency is terrible. It is. You posted one anecdotal example. I told you it is not consistent. It isn’t.
You said FTTP is not ubiquitous. It will be. It will cover 99%+ of premises by 2030. Will Starlink have a place to cover the minority of premises left behind. Yes but it is not a replacement.
Can it work on trains. I didn’t say it couldn’t, I said it was inferior in every way to trackside infrastructure and doesn’t work where there are obstructions. I also pointed out that Network Rail already has assessed it’s a non-starter and hence went for DAS and other trackside 4G/5G neutral host instead.
I have no issues with Starlink beyond pointing out its technical deficiencies. Now to be fair that is just the case for OneWeb which if you’d said that, I would have said the same things.
Horse - you dislike Starlink. We get that. But so far you’ve made a series of strident statements which get rapidly demolished. Terrible latency? Nope. Can’t do meetings? Nope. Slower than 5G? Nope. Everyone is getting FTTP (Stop and Think about the practicalities of that one). Nope. Can’t work on a train. Nope.
Starlink may turn into a cul-de-sac technology. But here and now it offers genuinely fast and usable connectivity to people who literally have no other options. Where you insist the other options actually do exist and actually are faster and better actually.
I don’t work in the industry. You appear to do. Which means you know more that I do. But keep posting things that are demonstrably wrong in the real world because you’ve set your mind against it. Why is that? In my industry I start with the facts on the ground and build a narrative to explain them. Not decide on the narrative and be selective and manipulate of the “facts” to prove me right
Starlink's capabilities don't matter a jot if you are a non-MAGA government, or in a business which in any way competes with any of Musk's. Because you cannot rely on the service.
And I'd just say I find your constant hyping of Musk's products to be very much against what I thought were your values and morals.
How am I constantly hyping? Some products, yes. Partially. My latest Just Get A Tesla video slags off "FSD Capability" and describes it as "a con". Am I hyping FSD Capability? I'm saying that Tesla are being outrageous selling this thing which they know doesn't work. Is that me hyping them?
I've repeatedly poked a stick at autonomous vehicles - I fully expect they to get banned after the first nasty automation crash. I think the robot thing is absurd. I've attacked Neuralink.
What I don't do is adjust the facts to match what you insist should be "values and morals". Horse laid down a list of things that Starlink cannot do and was factually wrong. Stating that is neither hyping nor not hyping - it is what it is.
My morality is my morality. When I was younger and more strident I drank the cool-aid where my morality should be everyone's morality. I grew out of that long ago - and had to change party to best reflect that. What I think isn't necessarily what you think. Why do you think that what you think should be inviolate and adopted by others? If I want a lecture on morality I could go to church. Oh year, I stopped doing that as well...
What's the title of your channel again? Is it "Don't get a Tesla"?
No?
And my post commented on the technical merits of Starlink being pointless given the political shenanigans that Musk is performing with it.
And as for morality and values: wait until Musk and MAGA come after gay people. Or bisexuals. See my point now?
It's a car. It's not a man.
Starlink is a service. Should Starlink abruptly get switched off then I would have to revert back to shonky slow options. Are you saying that because of a theoretical event maybe in the future that shonky and slow is my best option now?
And MAGA are *already* going after anyone who isn't white Christian and straight. So what? Jenrick was foaming on about straight white Christians the other day. If I want to pay attention to homophobia I don't need to bother with MAGA.
What's your point? Which technologies / companies / political platforms are morally acceptable to you? I converted to Apple a couple of years ago - does that make me liable for the Uighurs too?
The car is giving the man much of his power. And he is using that power in ways that are, in my view, very bad. I'd hope that was your view as well. People promoting his brands are helping him. You are doing so - and I guess you're making a little money out of it.
And your comparison of Jenrick with what is going on in America is ludicrous and wrong.
My point was not about whether it is acceptable to *me*. My point - as I stated above - is that if you are a country or organisation that might annoy Musk for some reason, then any of his services are unreliable. That will be a major drag against the use of those services anywhere outside MAGAland.
We disagree but that is ok. Yes I'm promoting multiple Musk brands. Do you think Musk cares one way or another? The notion that a consumer boycott will sink him is for the birds - its having an impact on sales, but its not the collapse that some are hoping for. Anyone see the sales numbers in February here? Shows that the bigger drops in a few markets in Europe are not universal which means little impact - especially on a company whose bonkers share price is based on AI and automation hopium rather than reality.
As for Jenrick, he said that criminal justice was biased against "Christians" and "Straight White Men". We call out dog whistle racism when its MAGA doing it, but don't want to call it out when its the Tories? And you talk about morality?
This just makes my point. "Morality" talks of absolutes. Right and wrong. I've used that kind of language in the past which was wrong. With very very few exceptions there are no absolutes - only shades of grey. What we have here is one shade of grey addressing another shade of grey and saying "ha, you are grey"
Well the fact is you use cars and services that are provided by a company whose main shareholder has been discovered to be a facist loving ketamine addicted billionaire.
You also make videos (for which you earn money and seem to derive benefits from) that promote those products.
Now it’s up to you as to whether you continue to do so but given your previous posts I suspect an accurate description for you would be hypocrite
He's a kethead, without question.
Is he a fascist? Really? What's the evidence of it - and don't say the salute.
If you actually examine Musk's positions they are often at the opposite end of the spectrum from fascism. Musk is a free speech absolutist. That's an absurd position btw, but fascists don't want free speech, they want to stop free speech. Musk wants industry to be unencumbered by state regulation. Fascism shackles industry to deliver what the state wants. Musk thinks there's lots of penpusher bureaucrats and whole departments that can be done away with. Fascism regulates every aspect of life to the nth degree. Musk wants more migration. MAGA and especially some of the far right parties he has hyped want zero or negative migration.
"Musk is a fascist" doesn't hold up to basic scrutiny once you drop the emotional response and actually look at it.
He's retweeted far-right accounts promoting civil war in the UK. He was reintrointruced to Trump's canpaign by Peter Thiel, an open techno-fascist, who is the kingmaker, and also promoted fascist ideologues like Curtis Yarvin to Vance.
He was named by his father after a character in a Nazi rocket scientists novel about a benign dictator who took over Mars. I would say the signs are pretty clear.
He has been ramping Yaxley-Lennon which made me very angry. But he isn't ramping it because he supports that mindset. SYL wants to remove migrants. Musk is in America saying that migration is a good thing (which enrages many MAGA activists).
"Musk is in America saying that migration is a good thing"
No.
He is saying *some* migration is a good thing. Mainly of rich, white people. That is a very different thing from what you said.
Here's one that came up at the weekend concerning the US Govt:
US Department of Justice writes to Georgetown University saying that it will not consider any of their law graduates for jobs (ie will bin the applications) because the curriculum contains "DEI" content.
DOJ says it won’t hire Georgetown Law Students because DOJ has “reliably” heard that Georgetown “continues to teach and promote DEI.” DOJ tells Georgetown “no applicant” who is a student at a school “that continues to teach and utilize DEI will be considered.” Putin does this. https://x.com/JoinTheUnionUS/status/1898071649787826581
The best part of that story is that the Fukwits posted the letter to the wrong address...
Like ATC, maybe DEI was the only thing making the department run properly
Interesting discussion. Personally I wouldn’t buy a Tesla now, or install Starlink, but I might have done a couple of years ago. But I am not in the very awkward position of being deep into a money-making business marketing Teslas on YouTube. The incentives are different and I understand why Rochdale Pioneers would be keen to draw a distinction between the product and the person.
I was rather more compromised back in 2014, and I say this with a large degree of shame. For sometime one of my largest clients was Rosneft. There’s an engagement letter out there in the ether signed by me and countersigned by Igor Sechin. So I was visiting Moscow and giving advice as the little green men marched into Crimea and the sanctions landed. And I didn’t stop straightaway because it would have been tricky, there was lots of money at stake and I was making mental distinctions between the project and The Project.
I even went back to Moscow in 2018 to do a seminar, just before the World Cup.
All of that makes me in hindsight complicit in the normalising and trade-washing that Putin’s government played on the West, and indeed complicit (ok in a tiny, immaterial way) in the hydrocarbon economy that they established to fund their rearming and blackmail the West.
We tell ourselves all sorts of stories to protect our own sense of morality.
@Malmesbury as you’ve conceded, Starlink will stop working as soon as a train goes through a tunnel/cutting.
Therefore for continuous connectivity they are going to have to supply trackside DAS or similar anyway.
This issue will end up being a non-starter and will end up being replaced long term by the 4G/5G trackside solution when it’s rolled out country-wide.
There is no replacement for that. Network Rail have accepted that. Apparently ScotRail are too dumb.
That's somewhat of a rowing back vs last night where you stridently insisted it wouldn't work on a train at all out in the open.
Connectivity on the move is hard. Stick enough masts alongside the railway and you can get decent cell coverage. In patches. Train WIFI is slow if it works at all and also disconnects in tunnels. Yes they're sticking some cellular coverage for some networks into some tunnels. But its very very patchy at best.
Friend of mine in darkest Lincolnshire has just binned FTTC for 5G and its super fast! But where you don't have that option, Starlink works. My average FTTC speed was 35 up. My average 4G speed (there is no 5G) is 30ish up. My average Starlink speed is 130ish - and would be faster if I invested in a new mesh system to replace this old crappy one - or hard wire.
Hard wire. It's what I did when I moved house.
So I have fibre (1Gb symmetrical) coming in the wall. Hard wire to the router cupboard. From there to each room and a whole bunch of cables to a wall panel behind the TV in the living room.
So all the boxes under the TV have got the full bandwidth and no lag. Ping is reported as 1-2ms
There's (non-meshed) wifi access points (UniFi with fancy beam forming etc) in most of the rooms. The access points also have hard ethernet ports.
When we bought this place we had a commercial fibre cable already extant. Problem is that getting it switched back on was going to cost £stupid a month.
Not entirely “Surrey, which has large numbers of children in private education, recorded a dip in the proportion of families getting their first pick of schools for September. ...For September 2025, 664 on-time applications were received from Surrey residents with children in the independent sector, compared with 608 for September 2024, a rise of 56....Two local authorities with a high proportion of privately educated children did report a fall in first choice offers, including Gloucestershire, where the offer rate fell from 86% to 81% this year...In Kensington and Chelsea, the London borough with the highest proportion of children at private schools, the first preference rate fell from 72.5% to 66.7%. Catherine Faulks, the council’s lead member for family and children’s services, said: “The number of children receiving their top-choice school place fluctuates each year and there are many nuanced factors that contribute.
“We are keeping a close watch on how changes to private school VAT may impact state school admission rates. While this doesn’t present an immediate problem, some secondary schools in Kensington and Chelsea are now seeing higher levels of oversubscription...."
Horse - you dislike Starlink. We get that. But so far you’ve made a series of strident statements which get rapidly demolished. Terrible latency? Nope. Can’t do meetings? Nope. Slower than 5G? Nope. Everyone is getting FTTP (Stop and Think about the practicalities of that one). Nope. Can’t work on a train. Nope.
Starlink may turn into a cul-de-sac technology. But here and now it offers genuinely fast and usable connectivity to people who literally have no other options. Where you insist the other options actually do exist and actually are faster and better actually.
I don’t work in the industry. You appear to do. Which means you know more that I do. But keep posting things that are demonstrably wrong in the real world because you’ve set your mind against it. Why is that? In my industry I start with the facts on the ground and build a narrative to explain them. Not decide on the narrative and be selective and manipulate of the “facts” to prove me right
Starlink's capabilities don't matter a jot if you are a non-MAGA government, or in a business which in any way competes with any of Musk's. Because you cannot rely on the service.
And I'd just say I find your constant hyping of Musk's products to be very much against what I thought were your values and morals.
How am I constantly hyping? Some products, yes. Partially. My latest Just Get A Tesla video slags off "FSD Capability" and describes it as "a con". Am I hyping FSD Capability? I'm saying that Tesla are being outrageous selling this thing which they know doesn't work. Is that me hyping them?
I've repeatedly poked a stick at autonomous vehicles - I fully expect they to get banned after the first nasty automation crash. I think the robot thing is absurd. I've attacked Neuralink.
What I don't do is adjust the facts to match what you insist should be "values and morals". Horse laid down a list of things that Starlink cannot do and was factually wrong. Stating that is neither hyping nor not hyping - it is what it is.
My morality is my morality. When I was younger and more strident I drank the cool-aid where my morality should be everyone's morality. I grew out of that long ago - and had to change party to best reflect that. What I think isn't necessarily what you think. Why do you think that what you think should be inviolate and adopted by others? If I want a lecture on morality I could go to church. Oh year, I stopped doing that as well...
What's the title of your channel again? Is it "Don't get a Tesla"?
No?
And my post commented on the technical merits of Starlink being pointless given the political shenanigans that Musk is performing with it.
And as for morality and values: wait until Musk and MAGA come after gay people. Or bisexuals. See my point now?
It's a car. It's not a man.
Starlink is a service. Should Starlink abruptly get switched off then I would have to revert back to shonky slow options. Are you saying that because of a theoretical event maybe in the future that shonky and slow is my best option now?
And MAGA are *already* going after anyone who isn't white Christian and straight. So what? Jenrick was foaming on about straight white Christians the other day. If I want to pay attention to homophobia I don't need to bother with MAGA.
What's your point? Which technologies / companies / political platforms are morally acceptable to you? I converted to Apple a couple of years ago - does that make me liable for the Uighurs too?
The car is giving the man much of his power. And he is using that power in ways that are, in my view, very bad. I'd hope that was your view as well. People promoting his brands are helping him. You are doing so - and I guess you're making a little money out of it.
And your comparison of Jenrick with what is going on in America is ludicrous and wrong.
My point was not about whether it is acceptable to *me*. My point - as I stated above - is that if you are a country or organisation that might annoy Musk for some reason, then any of his services are unreliable. That will be a major drag against the use of those services anywhere outside MAGAland.
We disagree but that is ok. Yes I'm promoting multiple Musk brands. Do you think Musk cares one way or another? The notion that a consumer boycott will sink him is for the birds - its having an impact on sales, but its not the collapse that some are hoping for. Anyone see the sales numbers in February here? Shows that the bigger drops in a few markets in Europe are not universal which means little impact - especially on a company whose bonkers share price is based on AI and automation hopium rather than reality.
As for Jenrick, he said that criminal justice was biased against "Christians" and "Straight White Men". We call out dog whistle racism when its MAGA doing it, but don't want to call it out when its the Tories? And you talk about morality?
This just makes my point. "Morality" talks of absolutes. Right and wrong. I've used that kind of language in the past which was wrong. With very very few exceptions there are no absolutes - only shades of grey. What we have here is one shade of grey addressing another shade of grey and saying "ha, you are grey"
Well the fact is you use cars and services that are provided by a company whose main shareholder has been discovered to be a facist loving ketamine addicted billionaire.
You also make videos (for which you earn money and seem to derive benefits from) that promote those products.
Now it’s up to you as to whether you continue to do so but given your previous posts I suspect an accurate description for you would be hypocrite
He's a kethead, without question.
Is he a fascist? Really? What's the evidence of it - and don't say the salute.
If you actually examine Musk's positions they are often at the opposite end of the spectrum from fascism. Musk is a free speech absolutist. That's an absurd position btw, but fascists don't want free speech, they want to stop free speech. Musk wants industry to be unencumbered by state regulation. Fascism shackles industry to deliver what the state wants. Musk thinks there's lots of penpusher bureaucrats and whole departments that can be done away with. Fascism regulates every aspect of life to the nth degree. Musk wants more migration. MAGA and especially some of the far right parties he has hyped want zero or negative migration.
"Musk is a fascist" doesn't hold up to basic scrutiny once you drop the emotional response and actually look at it.
His boss has just introduced a WHITE South African open door policy. You don't need to see him goose stepping arounnd in a 1942 Hugo Boss suit to get the idea.
Sure. But Musk is eulogising a visa system where people come to America from India, much to the horror of MAGA ideologues. Trump is not Musk is not Trump, despite their current marriage of convenience.
Only a relatively few people; and people carefully selected to be useful to he and his techbro friends.
Sure! So here is the direct comparison.
Did the Nazis selectively let Jews join the party and work their way up into positions of power? Does Yaxley-Lennon think that muslims should be allowed to stay here if they are doctors or senior business people?
Fascists do not want outsiders in their country. If you are advocating the merits of swarthy looking people of dubious religions coming to your country to make loads of money off working people, you're not a fascist.
The Nazis evolved during their time in power; they got worse. Who knows where Musk/Trump will end up politically?
If your argument is that anyone who is not Yaxley-Lennon is fine, then you're being silly. Musk wants immigration of a very small subset of people; either because they are like him (e.g. white South Africans), or because they are of use to him (engineers who will depress the pay of existing engineers).
Fascism is not Nazism, and the modern iteration, what you might call 'technofascism' is different still, but still very dangerous. Fascism has always operated by having an in group or groups, who the state is rigged to favour, and out groups it is rigged to attack. This can be defined by nationality, race, religion, class or politics. Often a combination of them that its leaders define as desirable or undesirable.
In the case of what we are seeing in the US, if it's not full-fat fascism it's functionally very similar and the main differences are being seeded in different eras. Musk etc have an outlook that for their version of the 'greater good' only people they deem as being of high value, matter. Hence why can simultaneously welcoming to very wealthy people from minorities and support their freedom, and yet unbelievably cruel to everyone else. If that sounds pretty fascist, it's because it is.
Indeed. The programme is essentially political techno-fascism, and economic techno-feudalism. It's not economic techno-fascism, because they don't support a command economy.
What Rochdale is correct about is that not buying a Tesla or Starlink because of Elon is stupid. If you buy any product you’re morally conflicted in some way.
As I have repeatedly pointed out, if you type the words "cis" or "cisgender" in a Tweet, the tweet will be hidden/muted/whatever the word is. Musk considers the terms to be slurs. Whatever else you may think of him, Musk is not, repeat not, a free speech absolutist.
Yup. Because Free Speech absolutism is absolutely not free.
Which is why I came of Twitter.
Honestly the thing about Twitter that I am really confused about is that since Elon bought it, they’ve completely broken the algorithm.
On every post now the related Tweets are either softcore porn, tweets from Elon himself or posts from Forgotten West. I have no idea how many times I have said “not interested”. I now just ignore them but it almost feels deliberate.
A long session of muting and blocking (start with Elon and Trump) every couple of weeks seems to keep it quite usable, still. Even the "For you" feed.
What Rochdale is correct about is that not buying a Tesla or Starlink because of Elon is stupid. If you buy any product you’re morally conflicted in some way.
This virtue signalling nonsense does grate.
There's a place for boycotts. But judging others for not taking part is just stupid.
As I have repeatedly pointed out, if you type the words "cis" or "cisgender" in a Tweet, the tweet will be hidden/muted/whatever the word is. Musk considers the terms to be slurs. Whatever else you may think of him, Musk is not, repeat not, a free speech absolutist.
Yup. Because Free Speech absolutism is absolutely not free.
Which is why I came of Twitter.
Honestly the thing about Twitter that I am really confused about is that since Elon bought it, they’ve completely broken the algorithm.
On every post now the related Tweets are either softcore porn, tweets from Elon himself or posts from Forgotten West. I have no idea how many times I have said “not interested”. I now just ignore them but it almost feels deliberate.
A long session of muting and blocking (start with Elon and Trump) every couple of weeks seems to keep it quite usable, still. Even the "For you" feed.
I’ve muted Musk and his posts still show up there. Hadn’t thought about blocking but I thought that had been nerfed now anyway?
In any case, as a user why should I have to go through all of this effort when it used to work fine? From a UX point of view this is me compensating for deficiencies in their product.
@Malmesbury as you’ve conceded, Starlink will stop working as soon as a train goes through a tunnel/cutting.
Therefore for continuous connectivity they are going to have to supply trackside DAS or similar anyway.
This issue will end up being a non-starter and will end up being replaced long term by the 4G/5G trackside solution when it’s rolled out country-wide.
There is no replacement for that. Network Rail have accepted that. Apparently ScotRail are too dumb.
I don't know if you followed the end of the discussion last night - the trains ScotRail are using it from are in the remoter areas of Scotland, where the line will have been constructed for minimal cuttings and tunnels. And there is probably much less track side infrastructure.
The overall point is that Starlink does work for many users. The whole point (apart from military use), is that by the time you add up a few percent of remote locations, planes, ships (and some trains), mobile users, backhaul for 4/5g etc, the world wide value of the market is many, many billions.
Which brings us to an interesting point. On many occasions, countries have said that "we are going to stop depending on X". On many fewer occasions, do they actually do so.
We can try and claim that Starlink doesn't work. And actually end up using it - it's in the process of rolling out on every airline in Europe, for example.
Or we can build a competitor.
In the case of Tesla, many countries around the world boast of how many high capacity, public chargers have been installed. Then you look at the how many are Tesla chargers.
Which means that we need to actually build a decent, inter-compatible network of chargers that actually work, and take payments easily, and don't charge rip-off prices.
This all goes against the Can't Doism of the Process State. But that is exactly where Musk comes from - when the system abdicates provision, that doesn't mean everyone sits with nicely folded hands.
The government would be much better off spending the money on rolling out the already planned 4G/5G coverage alongside the railway. They could do this for far less cost than building a Starlink competitor.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t try and compete against Starlink but there are better uses of money.
The SRN for its relatively low cost has been a good start.
The reason ScotRail went this route, is probably "It's cheap".
Starlink costs few billion a year to launch satellites and run them. We are already on board with OneWeb. We should be looking at our own mega constellation. Which would probably *make* money.
But that would mean building a cheap launch capability. And that would mean building things. And We Can't Do That. See BritVolt.
Thoughts and prayers with all the pb education experts.
That's other mince, sorry, by focussing on just year seven is a bit like deciding a football match result based on the first 10 minutes.
Spoiler alert: There are students in years other than year 7.
Surely you'd accept its less likely parents would take their kids out midway through their time at a school, and more likely they would make the switch before starting a new school?
My eldest has seen two kids leave his form since VAT kicked in.
If you're a parent with three kids in private schools you're going to have find on average nearly an extra grand a month to cover the VAT.
But if you are sending 3 kids to private school, you are already paying a lot of money, so that extra grand as a proportion of what you are already spending is not that high. An extra grand a month sounds a lot to most people, but most people couldn't ever afford to send 1, let alone 3 kids to private school.
For someone who is "not a fascist", he says and does a lot of fascist things
We did a lot of rowing back on racism on PB when a certain journalist wrote about letterboxes and picanninies, explaining it away as a satirical attack against Blair.
Perhaps we can equally explain away Elon's Heil Hitler salute as satire too.
Horse - you dislike Starlink. We get that. But so far you’ve made a series of strident statements which get rapidly demolished. Terrible latency? Nope. Can’t do meetings? Nope. Slower than 5G? Nope. Everyone is getting FTTP (Stop and Think about the practicalities of that one). Nope. Can’t work on a train. Nope.
Starlink may turn into a cul-de-sac technology. But here and now it offers genuinely fast and usable connectivity to people who literally have no other options. Where you insist the other options actually do exist and actually are faster and better actually.
I don’t work in the industry. You appear to do. Which means you know more that I do. But keep posting things that are demonstrably wrong in the real world because you’ve set your mind against it. Why is that? In my industry I start with the facts on the ground and build a narrative to explain them. Not decide on the narrative and be selective and manipulate of the “facts” to prove me right
Starlink's capabilities don't matter a jot if you are a non-MAGA government, or in a business which in any way competes with any of Musk's. Because you cannot rely on the service.
And I'd just say I find your constant hyping of Musk's products to be very much against what I thought were your values and morals.
How am I constantly hyping? Some products, yes. Partially. My latest Just Get A Tesla video slags off "FSD Capability" and describes it as "a con". Am I hyping FSD Capability? I'm saying that Tesla are being outrageous selling this thing which they know doesn't work. Is that me hyping them?
I've repeatedly poked a stick at autonomous vehicles - I fully expect they to get banned after the first nasty automation crash. I think the robot thing is absurd. I've attacked Neuralink.
What I don't do is adjust the facts to match what you insist should be "values and morals". Horse laid down a list of things that Starlink cannot do and was factually wrong. Stating that is neither hyping nor not hyping - it is what it is.
My morality is my morality. When I was younger and more strident I drank the cool-aid where my morality should be everyone's morality. I grew out of that long ago - and had to change party to best reflect that. What I think isn't necessarily what you think. Why do you think that what you think should be inviolate and adopted by others? If I want a lecture on morality I could go to church. Oh year, I stopped doing that as well...
What's the title of your channel again? Is it "Don't get a Tesla"?
No?
And my post commented on the technical merits of Starlink being pointless given the political shenanigans that Musk is performing with it.
And as for morality and values: wait until Musk and MAGA come after gay people. Or bisexuals. See my point now?
It's a car. It's not a man.
Starlink is a service. Should Starlink abruptly get switched off then I would have to revert back to shonky slow options. Are you saying that because of a theoretical event maybe in the future that shonky and slow is my best option now?
And MAGA are *already* going after anyone who isn't white Christian and straight. So what? Jenrick was foaming on about straight white Christians the other day. If I want to pay attention to homophobia I don't need to bother with MAGA.
What's your point? Which technologies / companies / political platforms are morally acceptable to you? I converted to Apple a couple of years ago - does that make me liable for the Uighurs too?
Don't Get a Tesla! There are plenty of other cars available.
and bollocks to people promoting Teslas on Youtube.
It's not really complicated. At all. You can twist yourself up in all kinds of mental bretzels and whataboutery so you don't feel so bad about yourself, but don't expect people on here not to call you out on it - and if you don't want anyone to lecture you on morality you're probably posting on the wrong forum!
Telling people to buy Teslas is fucking stupid unless you actively want the destruction of democracy and European liberal civilisation. Or maybe you just don't care enough about those things.
Good morning
That is simply harsh and unfair on Tesla owners who purchased their cars long before the Trump- Musk nightmare
Of course @RochdalePioneers doesn't want the destruction of democracy and European civilisation and I doubt owning or otherwise a Tesla has any relevance, other than the obnoxious and nasty Musk has a little bit less of his obscene wealth
And I would say, I have no interest in buying an ev either now or in the future and certainly have never owned one, though I have driven one
It's not about "Tesla owners who purchased their cars long before the Trump- Musk nightmare". It's about actively telling people now to buy Teslas.
Do you really think buying or promoting a Tesla is in anyway going to change Musk or Trump
I can understand your and others anger, but I will not join the pile on to @RochdalePioneers as seen this morning, and even though he and I have different politics, a sense of proportion is needed
Though as I said earlier I will not be buying a Tesla or any ev, as petrol cars will be available to 2035 and beyond by which time I will be in my 90s and my wife near 100, depending on the Good Lords generosity !!!!!
As somebody who frequently takes long train journeys and uses train WiFi whilst on them, I can say that train WiFi is, after a long period of highly variable availability, now reasonably sorted: you have a reasonable expectation of good service for text-based sites if not video. Tunnel journeys (eg the Severn Tunnel) disrupt this but only temporarily
@RochdalePioneers I haven’t rowed back anything. Can Starlink work on trains? Yes but not all the time. Hence when I said “no” I stand by what I said.
5G already works out in the open. It doesn’t work when you go into tunnels or cuttings but there are solutions to resolve that. There aren’t any for Starlink.
Can 5G work on trains. Yes, all the time.
So one solution is objectively superior to the other. Can Starlink be a backup or last resort. Yes.
As somebody who frequently takes long train journeys and uses train WiFi whilst on them, I can say that train WiFi is, after a long period of highly variable availability, now reasonably sorted: you have a reasonable expectation of good service for text-based sites if not video. Tunnel journeys (eg the Severn Tunnel) disrupt this but only temporarily
It uses 4G and 5G.
They will install a solution in the tunnel eventually, leaky feeder style it will be.
Horse - you dislike Starlink. We get that. But so far you’ve made a series of strident statements which get rapidly demolished. Terrible latency? Nope. Can’t do meetings? Nope. Slower than 5G? Nope. Everyone is getting FTTP (Stop and Think about the practicalities of that one). Nope. Can’t work on a train. Nope.
Starlink may turn into a cul-de-sac technology. But here and now it offers genuinely fast and usable connectivity to people who literally have no other options. Where you insist the other options actually do exist and actually are faster and better actually.
I don’t work in the industry. You appear to do. Which means you know more that I do. But keep posting things that are demonstrably wrong in the real world because you’ve set your mind against it. Why is that? In my industry I start with the facts on the ground and build a narrative to explain them. Not decide on the narrative and be selective and manipulate of the “facts” to prove me right
Starlink's capabilities don't matter a jot if you are a non-MAGA government, or in a business which in any way competes with any of Musk's. Because you cannot rely on the service.
And I'd just say I find your constant hyping of Musk's products to be very much against what I thought were your values and morals.
How am I constantly hyping? Some products, yes. Partially. My latest Just Get A Tesla video slags off "FSD Capability" and describes it as "a con". Am I hyping FSD Capability? I'm saying that Tesla are being outrageous selling this thing which they know doesn't work. Is that me hyping them?
I've repeatedly poked a stick at autonomous vehicles - I fully expect they to get banned after the first nasty automation crash. I think the robot thing is absurd. I've attacked Neuralink.
What I don't do is adjust the facts to match what you insist should be "values and morals". Horse laid down a list of things that Starlink cannot do and was factually wrong. Stating that is neither hyping nor not hyping - it is what it is.
My morality is my morality. When I was younger and more strident I drank the cool-aid where my morality should be everyone's morality. I grew out of that long ago - and had to change party to best reflect that. What I think isn't necessarily what you think. Why do you think that what you think should be inviolate and adopted by others? If I want a lecture on morality I could go to church. Oh year, I stopped doing that as well...
What's the title of your channel again? Is it "Don't get a Tesla"?
No?
And my post commented on the technical merits of Starlink being pointless given the political shenanigans that Musk is performing with it.
And as for morality and values: wait until Musk and MAGA come after gay people. Or bisexuals. See my point now?
It's a car. It's not a man.
Starlink is a service. Should Starlink abruptly get switched off then I would have to revert back to shonky slow options. Are you saying that because of a theoretical event maybe in the future that shonky and slow is my best option now?
And MAGA are *already* going after anyone who isn't white Christian and straight. So what? Jenrick was foaming on about straight white Christians the other day. If I want to pay attention to homophobia I don't need to bother with MAGA.
What's your point? Which technologies / companies / political platforms are morally acceptable to you? I converted to Apple a couple of years ago - does that make me liable for the Uighurs too?
The car is giving the man much of his power. And he is using that power in ways that are, in my view, very bad. I'd hope that was your view as well. People promoting his brands are helping him. You are doing so - and I guess you're making a little money out of it.
And your comparison of Jenrick with what is going on in America is ludicrous and wrong.
My point was not about whether it is acceptable to *me*. My point - as I stated above - is that if you are a country or organisation that might annoy Musk for some reason, then any of his services are unreliable. That will be a major drag against the use of those services anywhere outside MAGAland.
We disagree but that is ok. Yes I'm promoting multiple Musk brands. Do you think Musk cares one way or another? The notion that a consumer boycott will sink him is for the birds - its having an impact on sales, but its not the collapse that some are hoping for. Anyone see the sales numbers in February here? Shows that the bigger drops in a few markets in Europe are not universal which means little impact - especially on a company whose bonkers share price is based on AI and automation hopium rather than reality.
As for Jenrick, he said that criminal justice was biased against "Christians" and "Straight White Men". We call out dog whistle racism when its MAGA doing it, but don't want to call it out when its the Tories? And you talk about morality?
This just makes my point. "Morality" talks of absolutes. Right and wrong. I've used that kind of language in the past which was wrong. With very very few exceptions there are no absolutes - only shades of grey. What we have here is one shade of grey addressing another shade of grey and saying "ha, you are grey"
Well the fact is you use cars and services that are provided by a company whose main shareholder has been discovered to be a facist loving ketamine addicted billionaire.
You also make videos (for which you earn money and seem to derive benefits from) that promote those products.
Now it’s up to you as to whether you continue to do so but given your previous posts I suspect an accurate description for you would be hypocrite
He's a kethead, without question.
Is he a fascist? Really? What's the evidence of it - and don't say the salute.
If you actually examine Musk's positions they are often at the opposite end of the spectrum from fascism. Musk is a free speech absolutist. That's an absurd position btw, but fascists don't want free speech, they want to stop free speech. Musk wants industry to be unencumbered by state regulation. Fascism shackles industry to deliver what the state wants. Musk thinks there's lots of penpusher bureaucrats and whole departments that can be done away with. Fascism regulates every aspect of life to the nth degree. Musk wants more migration. MAGA and especially some of the far right parties he has hyped want zero or negative migration.
"Musk is a fascist" doesn't hold up to basic scrutiny once you drop the emotional response and actually look at it.
He's retweeted far-right accounts promoting civil war in the UK. He was reintrointruced to Trump's canpaign by Peter Thiel, an open techno-fascist, who is the kingmaker, and also promoted fascist ideologues like Curtis Yarvin to Vance.
He was named by his father after a character in a Nazi rocket scientists novel about a benign dictator who took over Mars. I would say the signs are pretty clear.
He has been ramping Yaxley-Lennon which made me very angry. But he isn't ramping it because he supports that mindset. SYL wants to remove migrants. Musk is in America saying that migration is a good thing (which enrages many MAGA activists).
So basically your argument is he is ramping right wing people for the lols not because he agrees with their viewpoint.
While mine is that Trump is posting those item because he does agree with their viewpoint
My argument is that he is ramping people who he thinks have been censored - SYL, AfD etc etc. It's bloody stupid, but it isn't fascism.
Do you think he gave Nazi salutes?
No, though I have been hugely entertained by the various side by side video clips. We don't even need to pull apart the mechanics of the salute and the very odd angle he was pulling vs the ramrod straight execution of the nazis doing it.
The proof that so many people offer for Musk being a fascist is those salutes. You yourself appear to have fallen back onto them as the last redoubt of an argument that falls apart under scrutiny.
Go back to my list of Musk vs Fascism positions. Discuss those point by point - those are relevant and would be whether or not a toddler moron has bounced around a stage like a 5 year old doung dodgy salutes, thumping the dias in excitement and doing absurd flag planting gestures complete with sounds.
"But he did a salute". Yeah. Harry dressed up as one. Cosplaying fascism doesn't make you actually fascist.
Interestingly I think Musk is a fascist - or maybe proro-fascist is a better description given he hasn't really got going yet. But I think the salute is entirely irrelevant and misleading. Far more important are Algakirk's list of 14 indicators, most of which I think Trump and Musk are ticking to a greater or lesser degree.
So the salute argument is pointless and ultimately wrong. You can find lots of examples of people we know are not fascists doing similar salutes and of course there are plenty of examples of people who we would happily class as fascists who have never been photographed making salutes. So it is rather daft to concentrate on this one irrelevant action.
I can follow your argument but, taking a step back, the Nazi salute can hardly be taken as neutral as to whether Musk is a fascist or not. It's at the very least a teensy bit fascist.
I think it was more of a demonstration of power than anything else. “I can do this and you can’t stop me”
For someone who is "not a fascist", he says and does a lot of fascist things
We did a lot of rowing back on racism on PB when a certain journalist wrote about letterboxes and picanninies, explaining it away as a satirical attack against Blair.
Perhaps we can equally explain away Elon's Heil Hitler salute as satire too.
The point there was the journalist in question was actually highlighting the colonialist attitudes of Blair - expecting Sanders of The River style worship.
@Malmesbury as you’ve conceded, Starlink will stop working as soon as a train goes through a tunnel/cutting.
Therefore for continuous connectivity they are going to have to supply trackside DAS or similar anyway.
This issue will end up being a non-starter and will end up being replaced long term by the 4G/5G trackside solution when it’s rolled out country-wide.
There is no replacement for that. Network Rail have accepted that. Apparently ScotRail are too dumb.
I don't know if you followed the end of the discussion last night - the trains ScotRail are using it from are in the remoter areas of Scotland, where the line will have been constructed for minimal cuttings and tunnels. And there is probably much less track side infrastructure.
The overall point is that Starlink does work for many users. The whole point (apart from military use), is that by the time you add up a few percent of remote locations, planes, ships (and some trains), mobile users, backhaul for 4/5g etc, the world wide value of the market is many, many billions.
Which brings us to an interesting point. On many occasions, countries have said that "we are going to stop depending on X". On many fewer occasions, do they actually do so.
We can try and claim that Starlink doesn't work. And actually end up using it - it's in the process of rolling out on every airline in Europe, for example.
Or we can build a competitor.
In the case of Tesla, many countries around the world boast of how many high capacity, public chargers have been installed. Then you look at the how many are Tesla chargers.
Which means that we need to actually build a decent, inter-compatible network of chargers that actually work, and take payments easily, and don't charge rip-off prices.
This all goes against the Can't Doism of the Process State. But that is exactly where Musk comes from - when the system abdicates provision, that doesn't mean everyone sits with nicely folded hands.
The government would be much better off spending the money on rolling out the already planned 4G/5G coverage alongside the railway. They could do this for far less cost than building a Starlink competitor.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t try and compete against Starlink but there are better uses of money.
The SRN for its relatively low cost has been a good start.
The reason ScotRail went this route, is probably "It's cheap".
Starlink costs few billion a year to launch satellites and run them. We are already on board with OneWeb. We should be looking at our own mega constellation. Which would probably *make* money.
But that would mean building a cheap launch capability. And that would mean building things. And We Can't Do That. See BritVolt.
I suspect ScotRail is aware that long term these issues will be resolved by a country-wide contract with Cellnex or similar and this will be just a stopgap.
SWR did something sort of similar with Rail5G which seems to have been canned now they’re disappearing.
The money you are advocating spending would be far more than the cost of installing trackside 5G.
Thoughts and prayers with all the pb education experts.
That's other mince, sorry, by focussing on just year seven is a bit like deciding a football match result based on the first 10 minutes.
Spoiler alert: There are students in years other than year 7.
Surely you'd accept its less likely parents would take their kids out midway through their time at a school, and more likely they would make the switch before starting a new school?
My eldest has seen two kids leave his form since VAT kicked in.
If you're a parent with three kids in private schools you're going to have find on average nearly an extra grand a month to cover the VAT.
But if you are sending 3 kids to private school, you are already paying a lot of money, so that extra grand as a proportion of what you are already spending is not that high. An extra grand a month sounds a lot to most people, but most people couldn't ever afford to send 1, let alone 3 kids to private school.
I know a few people who sacrifice quite a bit for private education for their children. The question is proportion.
As to how many will switch? - it will take several years to work through the system. Moving a child on the "in years" is very disruptive and hence uncommon. So people will be trying to stay till the end of primary, for example.
@RochdalePioneers I do work in the industry and have worked with Starlink and others on deploying their technology to sites without other backhaul options. So I am talking purely from experience.
As I already said, I am not a Tesla or Starlink hater. I literally held Tesla stock for over five years, did very well out of it. Believed in what Elon and co were doing. I sold when he started becoming unhinged.
Nothing I have said is wrong.
I said the latency is terrible. It is. You posted one anecdotal example. I told you it is not consistent. It isn’t.
You said FTTP is not ubiquitous. It will be. It will cover 99%+ of premises by 2030. Will Starlink have a place to cover the minority of premises left behind. Yes but it is not a replacement.
Can it work on trains. I didn’t say it couldn’t, I said it was inferior in every way to trackside infrastructure and doesn’t work where there are obstructions. I also pointed out that Network Rail already has assessed it’s a non-starter and hence went for DAS and other trackside 4G/5G neutral host instead.
I have no issues with Starlink beyond pointing out its technical deficiencies. Now to be fair that is just the case for OneWeb which if you’d said that, I would have said the same things.
So what do you want from me? You said that Starlink was useless for business use because the latency was terrible and wouldn't work for meetings. I'm literally sat on a Teams meeting as I type this. I've just run speed test several times. Consistently 30ish MS latency and 100MB down speed.
I can't get maybe a third of that from 4G. There is no 5G. And FTTC broadband was woefully inconsistent where sitting in meetings like this I would get thrown out as it buffered. I have never had any buffer issues with Starlink.
So ok, from your technical perspective "latency is terrible". From mine it is great. You insisted that I can't do what I am doing. But I can...
@Malmesbury as you’ve conceded, Starlink will stop working as soon as a train goes through a tunnel/cutting.
Therefore for continuous connectivity they are going to have to supply trackside DAS or similar anyway.
This issue will end up being a non-starter and will end up being replaced long term by the 4G/5G trackside solution when it’s rolled out country-wide.
There is no replacement for that. Network Rail have accepted that. Apparently ScotRail are too dumb.
I don't know if you followed the end of the discussion last night - the trains ScotRail are using it from are in the remoter areas of Scotland, where the line will have been constructed for minimal cuttings and tunnels. And there is probably much less track side infrastructure.
The overall point is that Starlink does work for many users. The whole point (apart from military use), is that by the time you add up a few percent of remote locations, planes, ships (and some trains), mobile users, backhaul for 4/5g etc, the world wide value of the market is many, many billions.
Which brings us to an interesting point. On many occasions, countries have said that "we are going to stop depending on X". On many fewer occasions, do they actually do so.
We can try and claim that Starlink doesn't work. And actually end up using it - it's in the process of rolling out on every airline in Europe, for example.
Or we can build a competitor.
In the case of Tesla, many countries around the world boast of how many high capacity, public chargers have been installed. Then you look at the how many are Tesla chargers.
Which means that we need to actually build a decent, inter-compatible network of chargers that actually work, and take payments easily, and don't charge rip-off prices.
This all goes against the Can't Doism of the Process State. But that is exactly where Musk comes from - when the system abdicates provision, that doesn't mean everyone sits with nicely folded hands.
The government would be much better off spending the money on rolling out the already planned 4G/5G coverage alongside the railway. They could do this for far less cost than building a Starlink competitor.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t try and compete against Starlink but there are better uses of money.
The SRN for its relatively low cost has been a good start.
The reason ScotRail went this route, is probably "It's cheap".
Starlink costs few billion a year to launch satellites and run them. We are already on board with OneWeb. We should be looking at our own mega constellation. Which would probably *make* money.
But that would mean building a cheap launch capability. And that would mean building things. And We Can't Do That. See BritVolt.
BritVolt was a company without any IP and no customers - it wasn’t exactly I demonstration of anything’s beyond hope and fraud over commonsense
For someone who is "not a fascist", he says and does a lot of fascist things
We did a lot of rowing back on racism on PB when a certain journalist wrote about letterboxes and picanninies, explaining it away as a satirical attack against Blair.
Perhaps we can equally explain away Elon's Heil Hitler salute as satire too.
The point there was the journalist in question was actually highlighting the colonialist attitudes of Blair - expecting Sanders of The River style worship.
That being so, the journalist in question used some unfortunate colonial era language to make his point.
@RochdalePioneers I do work in the industry and have worked with Starlink and others on deploying their technology to sites without other backhaul options. So I am talking purely from experience.
As I already said, I am not a Tesla or Starlink hater. I literally held Tesla stock for over five years, did very well out of it. Believed in what Elon and co were doing. I sold when he started becoming unhinged.
Nothing I have said is wrong.
I said the latency is terrible. It is. You posted one anecdotal example. I told you it is not consistent. It isn’t.
You said FTTP is not ubiquitous. It will be. It will cover 99%+ of premises by 2030. Will Starlink have a place to cover the minority of premises left behind. Yes but it is not a replacement.
Can it work on trains. I didn’t say it couldn’t, I said it was inferior in every way to trackside infrastructure and doesn’t work where there are obstructions. I also pointed out that Network Rail already has assessed it’s a non-starter and hence went for DAS and other trackside 4G/5G neutral host instead.
I have no issues with Starlink beyond pointing out its technical deficiencies. Now to be fair that is just the case for OneWeb which if you’d said that, I would have said the same things.
So what do you want from me? You said that Starlink was useless for business use because the latency was terrible and wouldn't work for meetings. I'm literally sat on a Teams meeting as I type this. I've just run speed test several times. Consistently 30ish MS latency and 100MB down speed.
I can't get maybe a third of that from 4G. There is no 5G. And FTTC broadband was woefully inconsistent where sitting in meetings like this I would get thrown out as it buffered. I have never had any buffer issues with Starlink.
So ok, from your technical perspective "latency is terrible". From mine it is great. You insisted that I can't do what I am doing. But I can...
I don’t want anything from you, I was just trying to point out that Starlink is not a replacement for 4G, 5G or FTTP.
To be fair 4G/5G aren’t a replacement for FTTP either.
I am very glad it works for you. I am just saying that it’s not a solution at scale.
I can assure you that 20-30ms of latency is not guaranteed and is one of the reasons it is restricted to mainly data where latency is not as much of an issue. I looked at it for backhaul for a while and it’s just too inconsistent to support a large number of phone calls.
@RochdalePioneers I do work in the industry and have worked with Starlink and others on deploying their technology to sites without other backhaul options. So I am talking purely from experience.
As I already said, I am not a Tesla or Starlink hater. I literally held Tesla stock for over five years, did very well out of it. Believed in what Elon and co were doing. I sold when he started becoming unhinged.
Nothing I have said is wrong.
I said the latency is terrible. It is. You posted one anecdotal example. I told you it is not consistent. It isn’t.
You said FTTP is not ubiquitous. It will be. It will cover 99%+ of premises by 2030. Will Starlink have a place to cover the minority of premises left behind. Yes but it is not a replacement.
Can it work on trains. I didn’t say it couldn’t, I said it was inferior in every way to trackside infrastructure and doesn’t work where there are obstructions. I also pointed out that Network Rail already has assessed it’s a non-starter and hence went for DAS and other trackside 4G/5G neutral host instead.
I have no issues with Starlink beyond pointing out its technical deficiencies. Now to be fair that is just the case for OneWeb which if you’d said that, I would have said the same things.
So what do you want from me?
They want you to drop both of the subframes from your Teᛋᛋla, build a cross and fucking nail yourself to it apparently.
@Malmesbury as you’ve conceded, Starlink will stop working as soon as a train goes through a tunnel/cutting.
Therefore for continuous connectivity they are going to have to supply trackside DAS or similar anyway.
This issue will end up being a non-starter and will end up being replaced long term by the 4G/5G trackside solution when it’s rolled out country-wide.
There is no replacement for that. Network Rail have accepted that. Apparently ScotRail are too dumb.
I don't know if you followed the end of the discussion last night - the trains ScotRail are using it from are in the remoter areas of Scotland, where the line will have been constructed for minimal cuttings and tunnels. And there is probably much less track side infrastructure.
The overall point is that Starlink does work for many users. The whole point (apart from military use), is that by the time you add up a few percent of remote locations, planes, ships (and some trains), mobile users, backhaul for 4/5g etc, the world wide value of the market is many, many billions.
Which brings us to an interesting point. On many occasions, countries have said that "we are going to stop depending on X". On many fewer occasions, do they actually do so.
We can try and claim that Starlink doesn't work. And actually end up using it - it's in the process of rolling out on every airline in Europe, for example.
Or we can build a competitor.
In the case of Tesla, many countries around the world boast of how many high capacity, public chargers have been installed. Then you look at the how many are Tesla chargers.
Which means that we need to actually build a decent, inter-compatible network of chargers that actually work, and take payments easily, and don't charge rip-off prices.
This all goes against the Can't Doism of the Process State. But that is exactly where Musk comes from - when the system abdicates provision, that doesn't mean everyone sits with nicely folded hands.
The government would be much better off spending the money on rolling out the already planned 4G/5G coverage alongside the railway. They could do this for far less cost than building a Starlink competitor.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t try and compete against Starlink but there are better uses of money.
The SRN for its relatively low cost has been a good start.
The reason ScotRail went this route, is probably "It's cheap".
Starlink costs few billion a year to launch satellites and run them. We are already on board with OneWeb. We should be looking at our own mega constellation. Which would probably *make* money.
But that would mean building a cheap launch capability. And that would mean building things. And We Can't Do That. See BritVolt.
BritVolt was a company without any IP and no customers - it wasn’t exactly I demonstration of anything’s beyond hope and fraud over commonsense
It was the kind of thing the Process State could understand - a flimflam real estate deal. Note that the one asset they had was the factory site....
What we need is to actually do things. Not talk about doing them. Not have consultations about doing them. Or reports on the social impact of doing them. Not learn lessons about doing them.
Actually do stuff.
It's a choice - if Liberal Democracy doesn't deliver, then other offers are available.
@RochdalePioneers I do work in the industry and have worked with Starlink and others on deploying their technology to sites without other backhaul options. So I am talking purely from experience.
As I already said, I am not a Tesla or Starlink hater. I literally held Tesla stock for over five years, did very well out of it. Believed in what Elon and co were doing. I sold when he started becoming unhinged.
Nothing I have said is wrong.
I said the latency is terrible. It is. You posted one anecdotal example. I told you it is not consistent. It isn’t.
You said FTTP is not ubiquitous. It will be. It will cover 99%+ of premises by 2030. Will Starlink have a place to cover the minority of premises left behind. Yes but it is not a replacement.
Can it work on trains. I didn’t say it couldn’t, I said it was inferior in every way to trackside infrastructure and doesn’t work where there are obstructions. I also pointed out that Network Rail already has assessed it’s a non-starter and hence went for DAS and other trackside 4G/5G neutral host instead.
I have no issues with Starlink beyond pointing out its technical deficiencies. Now to be fair that is just the case for OneWeb which if you’d said that, I would have said the same things.
So what do you want from me?
They want you to drop both of the subframes from your Teᛋᛋla, build a cross and fucking nail yourself to it apparently.
Are you even reading what I am saying? I’ve got no issue with him using Starlink and the people saying it’s morally wrong are idiots. I was just pointing out that it’s wrong to call it a replacement for FTTP and 4G/5G.
@RochdalePioneers I do work in the industry and have worked with Starlink and others on deploying their technology to sites without other backhaul options. So I am talking purely from experience.
As I already said, I am not a Tesla or Starlink hater. I literally held Tesla stock for over five years, did very well out of it. Believed in what Elon and co were doing. I sold when he started becoming unhinged.
Nothing I have said is wrong.
I said the latency is terrible. It is. You posted one anecdotal example. I told you it is not consistent. It isn’t.
You said FTTP is not ubiquitous. It will be. It will cover 99%+ of premises by 2030. Will Starlink have a place to cover the minority of premises left behind. Yes but it is not a replacement.
Can it work on trains. I didn’t say it couldn’t, I said it was inferior in every way to trackside infrastructure and doesn’t work where there are obstructions. I also pointed out that Network Rail already has assessed it’s a non-starter and hence went for DAS and other trackside 4G/5G neutral host instead.
I have no issues with Starlink beyond pointing out its technical deficiencies. Now to be fair that is just the case for OneWeb which if you’d said that, I would have said the same things.
So what do you want from me?
They want you to drop both of the subframes from your Teᛋᛋla, build a cross and fucking nail yourself to it apparently.
That would be a very heavy cross to bear, and on more than one level.
Buying Starlink when Musk can turn it off if he does not like you is not a smart move. In fact, buying any US-made or owned defence/security related product is probably not a great idea if there is any residual after-sale reliance on the manufacturer. Buying a Tesla is different because there are no real post-purchase dependency concerns but there is the association with Musk and that will clearly affect the choices a lot of people make.
@Malmesbury as you’ve conceded, Starlink will stop working as soon as a train goes through a tunnel/cutting.
Therefore for continuous connectivity they are going to have to supply trackside DAS or similar anyway.
This issue will end up being a non-starter and will end up being replaced long term by the 4G/5G trackside solution when it’s rolled out country-wide.
There is no replacement for that. Network Rail have accepted that. Apparently ScotRail are too dumb.
I don't know if you followed the end of the discussion last night - the trains ScotRail are using it from are in the remoter areas of Scotland, where the line will have been constructed for minimal cuttings and tunnels. And there is probably much less track side infrastructure.
The overall point is that Starlink does work for many users. The whole point (apart from military use), is that by the time you add up a few percent of remote locations, planes, ships (and some trains), mobile users, backhaul for 4/5g etc, the world wide value of the market is many, many billions.
Which brings us to an interesting point. On many occasions, countries have said that "we are going to stop depending on X". On many fewer occasions, do they actually do so.
We can try and claim that Starlink doesn't work. And actually end up using it - it's in the process of rolling out on every airline in Europe, for example.
Or we can build a competitor.
In the case of Tesla, many countries around the world boast of how many high capacity, public chargers have been installed. Then you look at the how many are Tesla chargers.
Which means that we need to actually build a decent, inter-compatible network of chargers that actually work, and take payments easily, and don't charge rip-off prices.
This all goes against the Can't Doism of the Process State. But that is exactly where Musk comes from - when the system abdicates provision, that doesn't mean everyone sits with nicely folded hands.
The government would be much better off spending the money on rolling out the already planned 4G/5G coverage alongside the railway. They could do this for far less cost than building a Starlink competitor.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t try and compete against Starlink but there are better uses of money.
The SRN for its relatively low cost has been a good start.
The reason ScotRail went this route, is probably "It's cheap".
Starlink costs few billion a year to launch satellites and run them. We are already on board with OneWeb. We should be looking at our own mega constellation. Which would probably *make* money.
But that would mean building a cheap launch capability. And that would mean building things. And We Can't Do That. See BritVolt.
I suspect ScotRail is aware that long term these issues will be resolved by a country-wide contract with Cellnex or similar and this will be just a stopgap.
SWR did something sort of similar with Rail5G which seems to have been canned now they’re disappearing.
The money you are advocating spending would be far more than the cost of installing trackside 5G.
Because the issues are far greater than rural Scottish trains - important though they are to their users.
Starlink will be increasing embedded in the infrastructure of the world. We can either offer an alternative to airline, the countries wiring up their mobile networks with it as backhaul etc etc. And, as a benefit have control of our own military capability (ask the Ukrainians what it is worth).
Or we can depend on Starlink, Kuiper and the coming Chinese alternatives.
Horse - you dislike Starlink. We get that. But so far you’ve made a series of strident statements which get rapidly demolished. Terrible latency? Nope. Can’t do meetings? Nope. Slower than 5G? Nope. Everyone is getting FTTP (Stop and Think about the practicalities of that one). Nope. Can’t work on a train. Nope.
Starlink may turn into a cul-de-sac technology. But here and now it offers genuinely fast and usable connectivity to people who literally have no other options. Where you insist the other options actually do exist and actually are faster and better actually.
I don’t work in the industry. You appear to do. Which means you know more that I do. But keep posting things that are demonstrably wrong in the real world because you’ve set your mind against it. Why is that? In my industry I start with the facts on the ground and build a narrative to explain them. Not decide on the narrative and be selective and manipulate of the “facts” to prove me right
Starlink's capabilities don't matter a jot if you are a non-MAGA government, or in a business which in any way competes with any of Musk's. Because you cannot rely on the service.
And I'd just say I find your constant hyping of Musk's products to be very much against what I thought were your values and morals.
How am I constantly hyping? Some products, yes. Partially. My latest Just Get A Tesla video slags off "FSD Capability" and describes it as "a con". Am I hyping FSD Capability? I'm saying that Tesla are being outrageous selling this thing which they know doesn't work. Is that me hyping them?
I've repeatedly poked a stick at autonomous vehicles - I fully expect they to get banned after the first nasty automation crash. I think the robot thing is absurd. I've attacked Neuralink.
What I don't do is adjust the facts to match what you insist should be "values and morals". Horse laid down a list of things that Starlink cannot do and was factually wrong. Stating that is neither hyping nor not hyping - it is what it is.
My morality is my morality. When I was younger and more strident I drank the cool-aid where my morality should be everyone's morality. I grew out of that long ago - and had to change party to best reflect that. What I think isn't necessarily what you think. Why do you think that what you think should be inviolate and adopted by others? If I want a lecture on morality I could go to church. Oh year, I stopped doing that as well...
What's the title of your channel again? Is it "Don't get a Tesla"?
No?
And my post commented on the technical merits of Starlink being pointless given the political shenanigans that Musk is performing with it.
And as for morality and values: wait until Musk and MAGA come after gay people. Or bisexuals. See my point now?
It's a car. It's not a man.
Starlink is a service. Should Starlink abruptly get switched off then I would have to revert back to shonky slow options. Are you saying that because of a theoretical event maybe in the future that shonky and slow is my best option now?
And MAGA are *already* going after anyone who isn't white Christian and straight. So what? Jenrick was foaming on about straight white Christians the other day. If I want to pay attention to homophobia I don't need to bother with MAGA.
What's your point? Which technologies / companies / political platforms are morally acceptable to you? I converted to Apple a couple of years ago - does that make me liable for the Uighurs too?
The car is giving the man much of his power. And he is using that power in ways that are, in my view, very bad. I'd hope that was your view as well. People promoting his brands are helping him. You are doing so - and I guess you're making a little money out of it.
And your comparison of Jenrick with what is going on in America is ludicrous and wrong.
My point was not about whether it is acceptable to *me*. My point - as I stated above - is that if you are a country or organisation that might annoy Musk for some reason, then any of his services are unreliable. That will be a major drag against the use of those services anywhere outside MAGAland.
We disagree but that is ok. Yes I'm promoting multiple Musk brands. Do you think Musk cares one way or another? The notion that a consumer boycott will sink him is for the birds - its having an impact on sales, but its not the collapse that some are hoping for. Anyone see the sales numbers in February here? Shows that the bigger drops in a few markets in Europe are not universal which means little impact - especially on a company whose bonkers share price is based on AI and automation hopium rather than reality.
As for Jenrick, he said that criminal justice was biased against "Christians" and "Straight White Men". We call out dog whistle racism when its MAGA doing it, but don't want to call it out when its the Tories? And you talk about morality?
This just makes my point. "Morality" talks of absolutes. Right and wrong. I've used that kind of language in the past which was wrong. With very very few exceptions there are no absolutes - only shades of grey. What we have here is one shade of grey addressing another shade of grey and saying "ha, you are grey"
Well the fact is you use cars and services that are provided by a company whose main shareholder has been discovered to be a facist loving ketamine addicted billionaire.
You also make videos (for which you earn money and seem to derive benefits from) that promote those products.
Now it’s up to you as to whether you continue to do so but given your previous posts I suspect an accurate description for you would be hypocrite
He's a kethead, without question.
Is he a fascist? Really? What's the evidence of it - and don't say the salute.
If you actually examine Musk's positions they are often at the opposite end of the spectrum from fascism. Musk is a free speech absolutist. That's an absurd position btw, but fascists don't want free speech, they want to stop free speech. Musk wants industry to be unencumbered by state regulation. Fascism shackles industry to deliver what the state wants. Musk thinks there's lots of penpusher bureaucrats and whole departments that can be done away with. Fascism regulates every aspect of life to the nth degree. Musk wants more migration. MAGA and especially some of the far right parties he has hyped want zero or negative migration.
"Musk is a fascist" doesn't hold up to basic scrutiny once you drop the emotional response and actually look at it.
He's retweeted far-right accounts promoting civil war in the UK. He was reintrointruced to Trump's canpaign by Peter Thiel, an open techno-fascist, who is the kingmaker, and also promoted fascist ideologues like Curtis Yarvin to Vance.
He was named by his father after a character in a Nazi rocket scientists novel about a benign dictator who took over Mars. I would say the signs are pretty clear.
He has been ramping Yaxley-Lennon which made me very angry. But he isn't ramping it because he supports that mindset. SYL wants to remove migrants. Musk is in America saying that migration is a good thing (which enrages many MAGA activists).
So basically your argument is he is ramping right wing people for the lols not because he agrees with their viewpoint.
While mine is that Trump is posting those item because he does agree with their viewpoint
My argument is that he is ramping people who he thinks have been censored - SYL, AfD etc etc. It's bloody stupid, but it isn't fascism.
Do you think he gave Nazi salutes?
No, though I have been hugely entertained by the various side by side video clips. We don't even need to pull apart the mechanics of the salute and the very odd angle he was pulling vs the ramrod straight execution of the nazis doing it.
The proof that so many people offer for Musk being a fascist is those salutes. You yourself appear to have fallen back onto them as the last redoubt of an argument that falls apart under scrutiny.
Go back to my list of Musk vs Fascism positions. Discuss those point by point - those are relevant and would be whether or not a toddler moron has bounced around a stage like a 5 year old doung dodgy salutes, thumping the dias in excitement and doing absurd flag planting gestures complete with sounds.
"But he did a salute". Yeah. Harry dressed up as one. Cosplaying fascism doesn't make you actually fascist.
Interestingly I think Musk is a fascist - or maybe proro-fascist is a better description given he hasn't really got going yet. But I think the salute is entirely irrelevant and misleading. Far more important are Algakirk's list of 14 indicators, most of which I think Trump and Musk are ticking to a greater or lesser degree.
So the salute argument is pointless and ultimately wrong. You can find lots of examples of people we know are not fascists doing similar salutes and of course there are plenty of examples of people who we would happily class as fascists who have never been photographed making salutes. So it is rather daft to concentrate on this one irrelevant action.
I haven't seen a lot of videos ('photographed' is meaningless, of course people sometimes have an arm raised) of "people we know are not fascists doing similar salutes". What do you have in mind?
Of course the interpretation depends partly on the context, and on the views that the person is known to be promoting. But Musk clearly performed fascist-style salutes at that rally. Maybe he was so off his head that he didn't have a clue what he was doing, and accidentally did them while not in control of his arms or something, but I find that a bit far-fetched.
If you are basing it off the video then I think if a Nazi in Germany in the 1930s had given the Nazi salute in that manner they would probably have been shot for taking the piss.
I thought the same until someone on PB pointed out that it's exactly how Hitler did it. He also did a weird camp over the shoulder variation.
As I have repeatedly pointed out, if you type the words "cis" or "cisgender" in a Tweet, the tweet will be hidden/muted/whatever the word is. Musk considers the terms to be slurs. Whatever else you may think of him, Musk is not, repeat not, a free speech absolutist.
Yup. Because Free Speech absolutism is absolutely not free.
Which is why I came of Twitter.
Honestly the thing about Twitter that I am really confused about is that since Elon bought it, they’ve completely broken the algorithm.
On every post now the related Tweets are either softcore porn, tweets from Elon himself or posts from Forgotten West. I have no idea how many times I have said “not interested”. I now just ignore them but it almost feels deliberate.
A long session of muting and blocking (start with Elon and Trump) every couple of weeks seems to keep it quite usable, still. Even the "For you" feed.
I’ve muted Musk and his posts still show up there. Hadn’t thought about blocking but I thought that had been nerfed now anyway?
In any case, as a user why should I have to go through all of this effort when it used to work fine? From a UX point of view this is me compensating for deficiencies in their product.
It's annoying sure. For now I still find it useful enough to make the effort. Blocking still works, except that it doesn't prevent the blockee stalking you. It does take them our of your feed, though.
@Malmesbury as you’ve conceded, Starlink will stop working as soon as a train goes through a tunnel/cutting.
Therefore for continuous connectivity they are going to have to supply trackside DAS or similar anyway.
This issue will end up being a non-starter and will end up being replaced long term by the 4G/5G trackside solution when it’s rolled out country-wide.
There is no replacement for that. Network Rail have accepted that. Apparently ScotRail are too dumb.
I don't know if you followed the end of the discussion last night - the trains ScotRail are using it from are in the remoter areas of Scotland, where the line will have been constructed for minimal cuttings and tunnels. And there is probably much less track side infrastructure.
The overall point is that Starlink does work for many users. The whole point (apart from military use), is that by the time you add up a few percent of remote locations, planes, ships (and some trains), mobile users, backhaul for 4/5g etc, the world wide value of the market is many, many billions.
Which brings us to an interesting point. On many occasions, countries have said that "we are going to stop depending on X". On many fewer occasions, do they actually do so.
We can try and claim that Starlink doesn't work. And actually end up using it - it's in the process of rolling out on every airline in Europe, for example.
Or we can build a competitor.
In the case of Tesla, many countries around the world boast of how many high capacity, public chargers have been installed. Then you look at the how many are Tesla chargers.
Which means that we need to actually build a decent, inter-compatible network of chargers that actually work, and take payments easily, and don't charge rip-off prices.
This all goes against the Can't Doism of the Process State. But that is exactly where Musk comes from - when the system abdicates provision, that doesn't mean everyone sits with nicely folded hands.
The government would be much better off spending the money on rolling out the already planned 4G/5G coverage alongside the railway. They could do this for far less cost than building a Starlink competitor.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t try and compete against Starlink but there are better uses of money.
The SRN for its relatively low cost has been a good start.
The reason ScotRail went this route, is probably "It's cheap".
Starlink costs few billion a year to launch satellites and run them. We are already on board with OneWeb. We should be looking at our own mega constellation. Which would probably *make* money.
But that would mean building a cheap launch capability. And that would mean building things. And We Can't Do That. See BritVolt.
I suspect ScotRail is aware that long term these issues will be resolved by a country-wide contract with Cellnex or similar and this will be just a stopgap.
SWR did something sort of similar with Rail5G which seems to have been canned now they’re disappearing.
The money you are advocating spending would be far more than the cost of installing trackside 5G.
Because the issues are far greater than rural Scottish trains - important though they are to their users.
Starlink will be increasing embedded in the infrastructure of the world. We can either offer an alternative to airline, the countries wiring up their mobile networks with it as backhaul etc etc. And, as a benefit have control of our own military capability (ask the Ukrainians what it is worth).
Or we can depend on Starlink, Kuiper and the coming Chinese alternatives.
I see your point. I think we are talking past each other.
@RochdalePioneers I do work in the industry and have worked with Starlink and others on deploying their technology to sites without other backhaul options. So I am talking purely from experience.
As I already said, I am not a Tesla or Starlink hater. I literally held Tesla stock for over five years, did very well out of it. Believed in what Elon and co were doing. I sold when he started becoming unhinged.
Nothing I have said is wrong.
I said the latency is terrible. It is. You posted one anecdotal example. I told you it is not consistent. It isn’t.
You said FTTP is not ubiquitous. It will be. It will cover 99%+ of premises by 2030. Will Starlink have a place to cover the minority of premises left behind. Yes but it is not a replacement.
Can it work on trains. I didn’t say it couldn’t, I said it was inferior in every way to trackside infrastructure and doesn’t work where there are obstructions. I also pointed out that Network Rail already has assessed it’s a non-starter and hence went for DAS and other trackside 4G/5G neutral host instead.
I have no issues with Starlink beyond pointing out its technical deficiencies. Now to be fair that is just the case for OneWeb which if you’d said that, I would have said the same things.
So what do you want from me?
They want you to drop both of the subframes from your Teᛋᛋla, build a cross and fucking nail yourself to it apparently.
I think people are underestimating the impact of childhood. If from a very early age you think the model to follow is to take over Mars, and that rockets and technology are more important than democracy, that"s obviously going to help inform your life.
No-other tech magnates had these obsessions in the 1990's ; they're just he product of an atypical background.
AFAIAA Musk did not have those obsessions from childhood.
Interestingly, Bezos did. His graduation speech mentioned that he looked forward to the day that space would be colonised. A local newspaper quoted his intention "to get all people off the earth and see it turned into a huge national park". That was back in 1982.
@Malmesbury as you’ve conceded, Starlink will stop working as soon as a train goes through a tunnel/cutting.
Therefore for continuous connectivity they are going to have to supply trackside DAS or similar anyway.
This issue will end up being a non-starter and will end up being replaced long term by the 4G/5G trackside solution when it’s rolled out country-wide.
There is no replacement for that. Network Rail have accepted that. Apparently ScotRail are too dumb.
I don't know if you followed the end of the discussion last night - the trains ScotRail are using it from are in the remoter areas of Scotland, where the line will have been constructed for minimal cuttings and tunnels. And there is probably much less track side infrastructure.
The overall point is that Starlink does work for many users. The whole point (apart from military use), is that by the time you add up a few percent of remote locations, planes, ships (and some trains), mobile users, backhaul for 4/5g etc, the world wide value of the market is many, many billions.
Which brings us to an interesting point. On many occasions, countries have said that "we are going to stop depending on X". On many fewer occasions, do they actually do so.
We can try and claim that Starlink doesn't work. And actually end up using it - it's in the process of rolling out on every airline in Europe, for example.
Or we can build a competitor.
In the case of Tesla, many countries around the world boast of how many high capacity, public chargers have been installed. Then you look at the how many are Tesla chargers.
Which means that we need to actually build a decent, inter-compatible network of chargers that actually work, and take payments easily, and don't charge rip-off prices.
This all goes against the Can't Doism of the Process State. But that is exactly where Musk comes from - when the system abdicates provision, that doesn't mean everyone sits with nicely folded hands.
The government would be much better off spending the money on rolling out the already planned 4G/5G coverage alongside the railway. They could do this for far less cost than building a Starlink competitor.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t try and compete against Starlink but there are better uses of money.
The SRN for its relatively low cost has been a good start.
The reason ScotRail went this route, is probably "It's cheap".
Starlink costs few billion a year to launch satellites and run them. We are already on board with OneWeb. We should be looking at our own mega constellation. Which would probably *make* money.
But that would mean building a cheap launch capability. And that would mean building things. And We Can't Do That. See BritVolt.
BritVolt was a company without any IP and no customers - it wasn’t exactly I demonstration of anything’s beyond hope and fraud over commonsense
BritVolt epitomises the strategic and practical uselessness of the last decade of Tory government. So far, Starmer is, marginally, better.
Here's one that came up at the weekend concerning the US Govt:
US Department of Justice writes to Georgetown University saying that it will not consider any of their law graduates for jobs (ie will bin the applications) because the curriculum contains "DEI" content.
DOJ says it won’t hire Georgetown Law Students because DOJ has “reliably” heard that Georgetown “continues to teach and promote DEI.” DOJ tells Georgetown “no applicant” who is a student at a school “that continues to teach and utilize DEI will be considered.” Putin does this. https://x.com/JoinTheUnionUS/status/1898071649787826581
Georgetown U founded by the Jesuits who have a long history of DEI and helping poor people with their education. Would worry more about Opus Dei than the Jesuits. Check the number of Trump appointees that have chosen the Latin Mass over the more secular version. A US specific version of a Theocracy incoming.
@RochdalePioneers I do work in the industry and have worked with Starlink and others on deploying their technology to sites without other backhaul options. So I am talking purely from experience.
As I already said, I am not a Tesla or Starlink hater. I literally held Tesla stock for over five years, did very well out of it. Believed in what Elon and co were doing. I sold when he started becoming unhinged.
Nothing I have said is wrong.
I said the latency is terrible. It is. You posted one anecdotal example. I told you it is not consistent. It isn’t.
You said FTTP is not ubiquitous. It will be. It will cover 99%+ of premises by 2030. Will Starlink have a place to cover the minority of premises left behind. Yes but it is not a replacement.
Can it work on trains. I didn’t say it couldn’t, I said it was inferior in every way to trackside infrastructure and doesn’t work where there are obstructions. I also pointed out that Network Rail already has assessed it’s a non-starter and hence went for DAS and other trackside 4G/5G neutral host instead.
I have no issues with Starlink beyond pointing out its technical deficiencies. Now to be fair that is just the case for OneWeb which if you’d said that, I would have said the same things.
So what do you want from me? You said that Starlink was useless for business use because the latency was terrible and wouldn't work for meetings. I'm literally sat on a Teams meeting as I type this. I've just run speed test several times. Consistently 30ish MS latency and 100MB down speed.
I can't get maybe a third of that from 4G. There is no 5G. And FTTC broadband was woefully inconsistent where sitting in meetings like this I would get thrown out as it buffered. I have never had any buffer issues with Starlink.
So ok, from your technical perspective "latency is terrible". From mine it is great. You insisted that I can't do what I am doing. But I can...
I forget what BCH does for a living but I remember all his wailing about not being allowed to put phone masts anywhere and everywhere. So I assume, based solely on that and his current obsession with dissing Starlink at every opportunity, that he has some connection with the mobile industry.
@Malmesbury as you’ve conceded, Starlink will stop working as soon as a train goes through a tunnel/cutting.
Therefore for continuous connectivity they are going to have to supply trackside DAS or similar anyway.
This issue will end up being a non-starter and will end up being replaced long term by the 4G/5G trackside solution when it’s rolled out country-wide.
There is no replacement for that. Network Rail have accepted that. Apparently ScotRail are too dumb.
I don't know if you followed the end of the discussion last night - the trains ScotRail are using it from are in the remoter areas of Scotland, where the line will have been constructed for minimal cuttings and tunnels. And there is probably much less track side infrastructure.
The overall point is that Starlink does work for many users. The whole point (apart from military use), is that by the time you add up a few percent of remote locations, planes, ships (and some trains), mobile users, backhaul for 4/5g etc, the world wide value of the market is many, many billions.
Which brings us to an interesting point. On many occasions, countries have said that "we are going to stop depending on X". On many fewer occasions, do they actually do so.
We can try and claim that Starlink doesn't work. And actually end up using it - it's in the process of rolling out on every airline in Europe, for example.
Or we can build a competitor.
In the case of Tesla, many countries around the world boast of how many high capacity, public chargers have been installed. Then you look at the how many are Tesla chargers.
Which means that we need to actually build a decent, inter-compatible network of chargers that actually work, and take payments easily, and don't charge rip-off prices.
This all goes against the Can't Doism of the Process State. But that is exactly where Musk comes from - when the system abdicates provision, that doesn't mean everyone sits with nicely folded hands.
The government would be much better off spending the money on rolling out the already planned 4G/5G coverage alongside the railway. They could do this for far less cost than building a Starlink competitor.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t try and compete against Starlink but there are better uses of money.
The SRN for its relatively low cost has been a good start.
The reason ScotRail went this route, is probably "It's cheap".
Starlink costs few billion a year to launch satellites and run them. We are already on board with OneWeb. We should be looking at our own mega constellation. Which would probably *make* money.
But that would mean building a cheap launch capability. And that would mean building things. And We Can't Do That. See BritVolt.
BritVolt was a company without any IP and no customers - it wasn’t exactly I demonstration of anything’s beyond hope and fraud over commonsense
BritVolt epitomises the strategic and practical uselessness of the last decade of Tory government. So far, Starmer is, marginally, better.
They were offered a grant - but based on milestones. One off the reason it ended relatively quickly was the government refused to hand over money, despite milestones not being complete.
Interesting discussion. Personally I wouldn’t buy a Tesla now, or install Starlink, but I might have done a couple of years ago. But I am not in the very awkward position of being deep into a money-making business marketing Teslas on YouTube. The incentives are different and I understand why Rochdale Pioneers would be keen to draw a distinction between the product and the person.
I was rather more compromised back in 2014, and I say this with a large degree of shame. For sometime one of my largest clients was Rosneft. There’s an engagement letter out there in the ether signed by me and countersigned by Igor Sechin. So I was visiting Moscow and giving advice as the little green men marched into Crimea and the sanctions landed. And I didn’t stop straightaway because it would have been tricky, there was lots of money at stake and I was making mental distinctions between the project and The Project.
I even went back to Moscow in 2018 to do a seminar, just before the World Cup.
All of that makes me in hindsight complicit in the normalising and trade-washing that Putin’s government played on the West, and indeed complicit (ok in a tiny, immaterial way) in the hydrocarbon economy that they established to fund their rearming and blackmail the West.
We tell ourselves all sorts of stories to protect our own sense of morality.
At one point in my chequered career I specialised in 'shaping' the numbers on PFI contracts to make them appear value for money when they weren't.
@RochdalePioneers I do work in the industry and have worked with Starlink and others on deploying their technology to sites without other backhaul options. So I am talking purely from experience.
As I already said, I am not a Tesla or Starlink hater. I literally held Tesla stock for over five years, did very well out of it. Believed in what Elon and co were doing. I sold when he started becoming unhinged.
Nothing I have said is wrong.
I said the latency is terrible. It is. You posted one anecdotal example. I told you it is not consistent. It isn’t.
You said FTTP is not ubiquitous. It will be. It will cover 99%+ of premises by 2030. Will Starlink have a place to cover the minority of premises left behind. Yes but it is not a replacement.
Can it work on trains. I didn’t say it couldn’t, I said it was inferior in every way to trackside infrastructure and doesn’t work where there are obstructions. I also pointed out that Network Rail already has assessed it’s a non-starter and hence went for DAS and other trackside 4G/5G neutral host instead.
I have no issues with Starlink beyond pointing out its technical deficiencies. Now to be fair that is just the case for OneWeb which if you’d said that, I would have said the same things.
So what do you want from me?
They want you to drop both of the subframes from your Teᛋᛋla, build a cross and fucking nail yourself to it apparently.
Are you even reading what I am saying?
No. Life's too short.
So even though I am providing industrial expertise you’d rather just troll? Okay.
@RochdalePioneers I do work in the industry and have worked with Starlink and others on deploying their technology to sites without other backhaul options. So I am talking purely from experience.
As I already said, I am not a Tesla or Starlink hater. I literally held Tesla stock for over five years, did very well out of it. Believed in what Elon and co were doing. I sold when he started becoming unhinged.
Nothing I have said is wrong.
I said the latency is terrible. It is. You posted one anecdotal example. I told you it is not consistent. It isn’t.
You said FTTP is not ubiquitous. It will be. It will cover 99%+ of premises by 2030. Will Starlink have a place to cover the minority of premises left behind. Yes but it is not a replacement.
Can it work on trains. I didn’t say it couldn’t, I said it was inferior in every way to trackside infrastructure and doesn’t work where there are obstructions. I also pointed out that Network Rail already has assessed it’s a non-starter and hence went for DAS and other trackside 4G/5G neutral host instead.
I have no issues with Starlink beyond pointing out its technical deficiencies. Now to be fair that is just the case for OneWeb which if you’d said that, I would have said the same things.
So what do you want from me? You said that Starlink was useless for business use because the latency was terrible and wouldn't work for meetings. I'm literally sat on a Teams meeting as I type this. I've just run speed test several times. Consistently 30ish MS latency and 100MB down speed.
I can't get maybe a third of that from 4G. There is no 5G. And FTTC broadband was woefully inconsistent where sitting in meetings like this I would get thrown out as it buffered. I have never had any buffer issues with Starlink.
So ok, from your technical perspective "latency is terrible". From mine it is great. You insisted that I can't do what I am doing. But I can...
I forget what BCH does for a living but I remember all his wailing about not being allowed to put phone masts anywhere and everywhere. So I assume, based solely on that and his current obsession with dissing Starlink at every opportunity, that he has some connection with the mobile industry.
I can diss OneWeb too if you’d like. It’s equally shite at scale.
Do you oppose my suggestion that planning should be liberalised especially for key infrastructure?
Thoughts and prayers with all the pb education experts.
That's other mince, sorry, by focussing on just year seven is a bit like deciding a football match result based on the first 10 minutes.
Spoiler alert: There are students in years other than year 7.
Surely you'd accept its less likely parents would take their kids out midway through their time at a school, and more likely they would make the switch before starting a new school?
My eldest has seen two kids leave his form since VAT kicked in.
If you're a parent with three kids in private schools you're going to have find on average nearly an extra grand a month to cover the VAT.
But if you are sending 3 kids to private school, you are already paying a lot of money, so that extra grand as a proportion of what you are already spending is not that high. An extra grand a month sounds a lot to most people, but most people couldn't ever afford to send 1, let alone 3 kids to private school.
I know a few people who sacrifice quite a bit for private education for their children. The question is proportion.
As to how many will switch? - it will take several years to work through the system. Moving a child on the "in years" is very disruptive and hence uncommon. So people will be trying to stay till the end of primary, for example.
If you send your kids to private school, your acquaintances will mostly be well off and the people impacted most by this policy will be among the less well off among that group, so it will seem like quite an unfair, even regressive, policy. Whereas, if you don't send your kids to private school, the people you know through school will be a broad mix, income wise, with fewer of the seriously rich than in the population as a whole, so the people impacted will seem relatively rich (which of course they are) and the policy will seem pretty fair. People live in their own bubble. I'm in the somewhat unusual position of being in both those bubbles at the same time (kids at state school but minted so most people I know through work send their kids private) and so it's quite evident to me how this is playing out.
@Malmesbury as you’ve conceded, Starlink will stop working as soon as a train goes through a tunnel/cutting.
Therefore for continuous connectivity they are going to have to supply trackside DAS or similar anyway.
This issue will end up being a non-starter and will end up being replaced long term by the 4G/5G trackside solution when it’s rolled out country-wide.
There is no replacement for that. Network Rail have accepted that. Apparently ScotRail are too dumb.
I don't know if you followed the end of the discussion last night - the trains ScotRail are using it from are in the remoter areas of Scotland, where the line will have been constructed for minimal cuttings and tunnels. And there is probably much less track side infrastructure.
The overall point is that Starlink does work for many users. The whole point (apart from military use), is that by the time you add up a few percent of remote locations, planes, ships (and some trains), mobile users, backhaul for 4/5g etc, the world wide value of the market is many, many billions.
Which brings us to an interesting point. On many occasions, countries have said that "we are going to stop depending on X". On many fewer occasions, do they actually do so.
We can try and claim that Starlink doesn't work. And actually end up using it - it's in the process of rolling out on every airline in Europe, for example.
Or we can build a competitor.
In the case of Tesla, many countries around the world boast of how many high capacity, public chargers have been installed. Then you look at the how many are Tesla chargers.
Which means that we need to actually build a decent, inter-compatible network of chargers that actually work, and take payments easily, and don't charge rip-off prices.
This all goes against the Can't Doism of the Process State. But that is exactly where Musk comes from - when the system abdicates provision, that doesn't mean everyone sits with nicely folded hands.
The government would be much better off spending the money on rolling out the already planned 4G/5G coverage alongside the railway. They could do this for far less cost than building a Starlink competitor.
I’m not saying they shouldn’t try and compete against Starlink but there are better uses of money.
The SRN for its relatively low cost has been a good start.
The reason ScotRail went this route, is probably "It's cheap".
Starlink costs few billion a year to launch satellites and run them. We are already on board with OneWeb. We should be looking at our own mega constellation. Which would probably *make* money.
But that would mean building a cheap launch capability. And that would mean building things. And We Can't Do That. See BritVolt.
BritVolt was a company without any IP and no customers - it wasn’t exactly I demonstration of anything’s beyond hope and fraud over commonsense
BritVolt epitomises the strategic and practical uselessness of the last decade of Tory government. So far, Starmer is, marginally, better.
They were offered a grant - but based on milestones. One off the reason it ended relatively quickly was the government refused to hand over money, despite milestones not being complete.
They were obviously a bunch of useless chancers from the off, to anyone taking a serious look, which ought to have been expected from a government serious about having a battery industry at all. But then again, there were a number of useless chancers running the government.
I only use phone masts as an example because it’s something I know. I prefer to speak to things I know in depth but I am sure it’s the same for housing and so on.
I’d support scrapping planning altogether. I am happy to accept that’s an unpopular position though.
This is probably the only thing the Chinese get right. Just build.
Interesting discussion. Personally I wouldn’t buy a Tesla now, or install Starlink, but I might have done a couple of years ago. But I am not in the very awkward position of being deep into a money-making business marketing Teslas on YouTube. The incentives are different and I understand why Rochdale Pioneers would be keen to draw a distinction between the product and the person.
I was rather more compromised back in 2014, and I say this with a large degree of shame. For sometime one of my largest clients was Rosneft. There’s an engagement letter out there in the ether signed by me and countersigned by Igor Sechin. So I was visiting Moscow and giving advice as the little green men marched into Crimea and the sanctions landed. And I didn’t stop straightaway because it would have been tricky, there was lots of money at stake and I was making mental distinctions between the project and The Project.
I even went back to Moscow in 2018 to do a seminar, just before the World Cup.
All of that makes me in hindsight complicit in the normalising and trade-washing that Putin’s government played on the West, and indeed complicit (ok in a tiny, immaterial way) in the hydrocarbon economy that they established to fund their rearming and blackmail the West.
We tell ourselves all sorts of stories to protect our own sense of morality.
At one point in my chequered career I specialised in 'shaping' the numbers on PFI contracts to make them appear value for money when they weren't.
PB having its truth and reconciliation/"Are we the bad guys" moment.
Buying Starlink when Musk can turn it off if he does not like you is not a smart move. In fact, buying any US-made or owned defence/security related product is probably not a great idea if there is any residual after-sale reliance on the manufacturer. Buying a Tesla is different because there are no real post-purchase dependency concerns but there is the association with Musk and that will clearly affect the choices a lot of people make.
Perhaps countries need to buy both US and Chinese weapons and trust that as they are rivals both won't get turned off at the same time.....
Thoughts and prayers with all the pb education experts.
That's other mince, sorry, by focussing on just year seven is a bit like deciding a football match result based on the first 10 minutes.
Spoiler alert: There are students in years other than year 7.
Surely you'd accept its less likely parents would take their kids out midway through their time at a school, and more likely they would make the switch before starting a new school?
My eldest has seen two kids leave his form since VAT kicked in.
If you're a parent with three kids in private schools you're going to have find on average nearly an extra grand a month to cover the VAT.
But if you are sending 3 kids to private school, you are already paying a lot of money, so that extra grand as a proportion of what you are already spending is not that high. An extra grand a month sounds a lot to most people, but most people couldn't ever afford to send 1, let alone 3 kids to private school.
I know a few people who sacrifice quite a bit for private education for their children. The question is proportion.
As to how many will switch? - it will take several years to work through the system. Moving a child on the "in years" is very disruptive and hence uncommon. So people will be trying to stay till the end of primary, for example.
If you send your kids to private school, your acquaintances will mostly be well off and the people impacted most by this policy will be among the less well off among that group, so it will seem like quite an unfair, even regressive, policy. Whereas, if you don't send your kids to private school, the people you know through school will be a broad mix, income wise, with fewer of the seriously rich than in the population as a whole, so the people impacted will seem relatively rich (which of course they are) and the policy will seem pretty fair. People live in their own bubble. I'm in the somewhat unusual position of being in both those bubbles at the same time (kids at state school but minted so most people I know through work send their kids private) and so it's quite evident to me how this is playing out.
Thoughts and prayers with all the pb education experts.
That's other mince, sorry, by focussing on just year seven is a bit like deciding a football match result based on the first 10 minutes.
Spoiler alert: There are students in years other than year 7.
Surely you'd accept its less likely parents would take their kids out midway through their time at a school, and more likely they would make the switch before starting a new school?
My eldest has seen two kids leave his form since VAT kicked in.
If you're a parent with three kids in private schools you're going to have find on average nearly an extra grand a month to cover the VAT.
But if you are sending 3 kids to private school, you are already paying a lot of money, so that extra grand as a proportion of what you are already spending is not that high. An extra grand a month sounds a lot to most people, but most people couldn't ever afford to send 1, let alone 3 kids to private school.
I know a few people who sacrifice quite a bit for private education for their children. The question is proportion.
As to how many will switch? - it will take several years to work through the system. Moving a child on the "in years" is very disruptive and hence uncommon. So people will be trying to stay till the end of primary, for example.
If you send your kids to private school, your acquaintances will mostly be well off and the people impacted most by this policy will be among the less well off among that group, so it will seem like quite an unfair, even regressive, policy. Whereas, if you don't send your kids to private school, the people you know through school will be a broad mix, income wise, with fewer of the seriously rich than in the population as a whole, so the people impacted will seem relatively rich (which of course they are) and the policy will seem pretty fair. People live in their own bubble. I'm in the somewhat unusual position of being in both those bubbles at the same time (kids at state school but minted so most people I know through work send their kids private) and so it's quite evident to me how this is playing out.
How is it playing out?
Lots of moaning, no switching to the state sector.
Thoughts and prayers with all the pb education experts.
That's other mince, sorry, by focussing on just year seven is a bit like deciding a football match result based on the first 10 minutes.
Spoiler alert: There are students in years other than year 7.
Surely you'd accept its less likely parents would take their kids out midway through their time at a school, and more likely they would make the switch before starting a new school?
My eldest has seen two kids leave his form since VAT kicked in.
If you're a parent with three kids in private schools you're going to have find on average nearly an extra grand a month to cover the VAT.
I don't think that quite adds up tbh. A thumbnail analysis, that anyone can I am sure pick nits off.
Average fees per annum for private schooling in the UK are £18k per annum. For three children that is £54k per annum, or £4.5k per month. That gives 20% per month as £900 if assume a 20% increase is due to VAT.
Since VAT is a tax on outputs-inputs, it should logically be less than a 20% overall rise, unless the provider is taking advantage.
But inflation is around 3% in the last 6 months, and higher before that. So if we take inflation off that 14% (and school fees have increased at more than inflation pretty much every year in the last 20 years) that brings it down to 11% due to the VAT.
And if we recognise the historical trend of underlying fee increases being 1.5-2% or so above inflation that knocks it down to under 10%.
Which puts the actual impact of VAT in those circs at more like £450-500 per month.
That is still a chunk, but I think this is overegged. Perhaps they need to do what is expected of the state and increase their efficiency.
Thoughts and prayers with all the pb education experts.
That's other mince, sorry, by focussing on just year seven is a bit like deciding a football match result based on the first 10 minutes.
Spoiler alert: There are students in years other than year 7.
Surely you'd accept its less likely parents would take their kids out midway through their time at a school, and more likely they would make the switch before starting a new school?
My eldest has seen two kids leave his form since VAT kicked in.
If you're a parent with three kids in private schools you're going to have find on average nearly an extra grand a month to cover the VAT.
But if you are sending 3 kids to private school, you are already paying a lot of money, so that extra grand as a proportion of what you are already spending is not that high. An extra grand a month sounds a lot to most people, but most people couldn't ever afford to send 1, let alone 3 kids to private school.
I know a few people who sacrifice quite a bit for private education for their children. The question is proportion.
As to how many will switch? - it will take several years to work through the system. Moving a child on the "in years" is very disruptive and hence uncommon. So people will be trying to stay till the end of primary, for example.
If you send your kids to private school, your acquaintances will mostly be well off and the people impacted most by this policy will be among the less well off among that group, so it will seem like quite an unfair, even regressive, policy. Whereas, if you don't send your kids to private school, the people you know through school will be a broad mix, income wise, with fewer of the seriously rich than in the population as a whole, so the people impacted will seem relatively rich (which of course they are) and the policy will seem pretty fair. People live in their own bubble. I'm in the somewhat unusual position of being in both those bubbles at the same time (kids at state school but minted so most people I know through work send their kids private) and so it's quite evident to me how this is playing out.
How is it playing out?
Lots of moaning, no switching to the state sector.
To be honest, I could have predicted that from purely common sense.
How many people are so close to being unable to afford the fees that this change means they’ve had to now stop going? It must be a tiny minority.
The people shouting seem to have no issue with paying even with the change so my simple question is: why shouldn’t you pay?
My fundamental view remains though that we should have made state schools better before going after private schools.
Thoughts and prayers with all the pb education experts.
That's other mince, sorry, by focussing on just year seven is a bit like deciding a football match result based on the first 10 minutes.
Spoiler alert: There are students in years other than year 7.
Surely you'd accept its less likely parents would take their kids out midway through their time at a school, and more likely they would make the switch before starting a new school?
My eldest has seen two kids leave his form since VAT kicked in.
If you're a parent with three kids in private schools you're going to have find on average nearly an extra grand a month to cover the VAT.
But if you are sending 3 kids to private school, you are already paying a lot of money, so that extra grand as a proportion of what you are already spending is not that high. An extra grand a month sounds a lot to most people, but most people couldn't ever afford to send 1, let alone 3 kids to private school.
I know a few people who sacrifice quite a bit for private education for their children. The question is proportion.
As to how many will switch? - it will take several years to work through the system. Moving a child on the "in years" is very disruptive and hence uncommon. So people will be trying to stay till the end of primary, for example.
If you send your kids to private school, your acquaintances will mostly be well off and the people impacted most by this policy will be among the less well off among that group, so it will seem like quite an unfair, even regressive, policy. Whereas, if you don't send your kids to private school, the people you know through school will be a broad mix, income wise, with fewer of the seriously rich than in the population as a whole, so the people impacted will seem relatively rich (which of course they are) and the policy will seem pretty fair. People live in their own bubble. I'm in the somewhat unusual position of being in both those bubbles at the same time (kids at state school but minted so most people I know through work send their kids private) and so it's quite evident to me how this is playing out.
We are in similar bubbles in the same part of London. My main reference point is the parent group of our local primary school, where our youngest is in year 6 and everyone has been choosing school options and hearing if they’re successful.
There is roughly the same (small) proportion of children going to private secondaries as in previous years, from what I can see. Some on full fees, some on scholarships or bursaries. 4 or 5 in the year.
A couple got into grammar schools in Kent, which means a big commute. The rest are going to one of the - generally pretty good - state schools in the area and one managed to get through the entry lottery to the wildly oversubscribed Kingsdale school in Dulwich.
But generally London schools are way less full than they were a decade ago as local demographics have collapsed.
Buying Starlink when Musk can turn it off if he does not like you is not a smart move. In fact, buying any US-made or owned defence/security related product is probably not a great idea if there is any residual after-sale reliance on the manufacturer. Buying a Tesla is different because there are no real post-purchase dependency concerns but there is the association with Musk and that will clearly affect the choices a lot of people make.
I'm one consumer. My business bought Starlink a couple of years ago and despite claims to the contrary it is consistently faster than any other option available.
Lets assume that Musk switches it off tomorrow. I revert back to an alternative. Same if he turns it off next month. Next year. If that happens then we revert back to the slower laggier alternatives, but have had the benefit of the superior faster product.
I'm unclear where the downsides are.
In politics there is a real problem with dismissing real world lived experience because actually I know more than you and actually the stats show that what you have in the real world you actually don't actually.
I think Horse is a great poster but repeatedly he has told me that my lived experience of using Starlink isn't real. Translate that into politics and we have the Tories putting up taxes and trying to tell people that the big tax rise eating into their net pay on their payslip is actually a cut actually, or one of a myriad of Labour topics where they are right and the voters are wrong. I can still picture the Momentum activist literally finger jabbing at a guy on his doorstep berating him about how he was wrong about the stuff he was saying about his life.
The header is about Reform - and they're doing very well by not falling into this trap of telling people they are wrong when they describe their lives. We can disagree with a political or philosophical perspective, but when that translates into insisting that lived experience is wrong then you've lost.
Talking of Musk acting like an autocrat, this is a fascinating insight into how he's recently been acting as a dictator deputy.
Trump introduced Musk, who took control of the meeting, declaring the country would “go bankrupt” if he were not allowed to destroy the government untrammeled. He stood above the cabinet secretaries, wearing all black, a T-shirt reading “Tech Support”, a black Maga cap, and condescended: “And President Trump has put together, I think, the best cabinet ever, literally.” The questions came from the reporters in the room. The nervous cabinet members sat silently, worried about not one but two overlords. Musk was asked questions about his demand that federal employees justify their work every week and wondered how many “you’re looking to cut, total”. Musk gave no answer. Trump intervened: “We’re bloated, we’re sloppy."
Talking of Musk acting like an autocrat, this is a fascinating insight into how he's recently been acting as a dictator deputy.
Trump introduced Musk, who took control of the meeting, declaring the country would “go bankrupt” if he were not allowed to destroy the government untrammeled. He stood above the cabinet secretaries, wearing all black, a T-shirt reading “Tech Support”, a black Maga cap, and condescended: “And President Trump has put together, I think, the best cabinet ever, literally.” The questions came from the reporters in the room. The nervous cabinet members sat silently, worried about not one but two overlords. Musk was asked questions about his demand that federal employees justify their work every week and wondered how many “you’re looking to cut, total”. Musk gave no answer. Trump intervened: “We’re bloated, we’re sloppy."
Here's one that came up at the weekend concerning the US Govt:
US Department of Justice writes to Georgetown University saying that it will not consider any of their law graduates for jobs (ie will bin the applications) because the curriculum contains "DEI" content.
DOJ says it won’t hire Georgetown Law Students because DOJ has “reliably” heard that Georgetown “continues to teach and promote DEI.” DOJ tells Georgetown “no applicant” who is a student at a school “that continues to teach and utilize DEI will be considered.” Putin does this. https://x.com/JoinTheUnionUS/status/1898071649787826581
Georgetown U founded by the Jesuits who have a long history of DEI and helping poor people with their education. Would worry more about Opus Dei than the Jesuits. Check the number of Trump appointees that have chosen the Latin Mass over the more secular version. A US specific version of a Theocracy incoming.
There is nothing remotely theocratic about the Latin Mass, Rees Mogg of course is a big Latin Mass fan too as was the late Pope Benedict even if Pope Francis restricted it.
Having the mass in Latin, as was the usual case before Vatican II in the mid 1960s, also ensured it was the same in every nation even if it is now normally done in the language of the nation it is held in.
Support for the Latin Mass is a good way of distinguishing conservative from liberal Roman Catholics though, hence VP Vance also a fan of Latin Masses
Buying Starlink when Musk can turn it off if he does not like you is not a smart move. In fact, buying any US-made or owned defence/security related product is probably not a great idea if there is any residual after-sale reliance on the manufacturer. Buying a Tesla is different because there are no real post-purchase dependency concerns but there is the association with Musk and that will clearly affect the choices a lot of people make.
I'm one consumer. My business bought Starlink a couple of years ago and despite claims to the contrary it is consistently faster than any other option available.
Lets assume that Musk switches it off tomorrow. I revert back to an alternative. Same if he turns it off next month. Next year. If that happens then we revert back to the slower laggier alternatives, but have had the benefit of the superior faster product.
I'm unclear where the downsides are.
In politics there is a real problem with dismissing real world lived experience because actually I know more than you and actually the stats show that what you have in the real world you actually don't actually.
I think Horse is a great poster but repeatedly he has told me that my lived experience of using Starlink isn't real. Translate that into politics and we have the Tories putting up taxes and trying to tell people that the big tax rise eating into their net pay on their payslip is actually a cut actually, or one of a myriad of Labour topics where they are right and the voters are wrong. I can still picture the Momentum activist literally finger jabbing at a guy on his doorstep berating him about how he was wrong about the stuff he was saying about his life.
The header is about Reform - and they're doing very well by not falling into this trap of telling people they are wrong when they describe their lives. We can disagree with a political or philosophical perspective, but when that translates into insisting that lived experience is wrong then you've lost.
I think that’s unfair. I am very glad Starlink works for you. My point was simply that the latency is not reliable and not comparable to other solutions. If it works for you then great.
I am not trying to deny your lived experience, what I am denying is that it is a solution that can work for the vast majority. That is all.
Once again, this is purely a technical argument. I’d make the same arguments about OneWeb.
As I’ve said repeatedly: use Starlink as you wish. The fact you’re being told not to by a bunch of virtue signallers is becoming very boring.
Thoughts and prayers with all the pb education experts.
That's other mince, sorry, by focussing on just year seven is a bit like deciding a football match result based on the first 10 minutes.
Spoiler alert: There are students in years other than year 7.
Surely you'd accept its less likely parents would take their kids out midway through their time at a school, and more likely they would make the switch before starting a new school?
My eldest has seen two kids leave his form since VAT kicked in.
If you're a parent with three kids in private schools you're going to have find on average nearly an extra grand a month to cover the VAT.
But if you are sending 3 kids to private school, you are already paying a lot of money, so that extra grand as a proportion of what you are already spending is not that high. An extra grand a month sounds a lot to most people, but most people couldn't ever afford to send 1, let alone 3 kids to private school.
I know a few people who sacrifice quite a bit for private education for their children. The question is proportion.
As to how many will switch? - it will take several years to work through the system. Moving a child on the "in years" is very disruptive and hence uncommon. So people will be trying to stay till the end of primary, for example.
If you send your kids to private school, your acquaintances will mostly be well off and the people impacted most by this policy will be among the less well off among that group, so it will seem like quite an unfair, even regressive, policy. Whereas, if you don't send your kids to private school, the people you know through school will be a broad mix, income wise, with fewer of the seriously rich than in the population as a whole, so the people impacted will seem relatively rich (which of course they are) and the policy will seem pretty fair. People live in their own bubble. I'm in the somewhat unusual position of being in both those bubbles at the same time (kids at state school but minted so most people I know through work send their kids private) and so it's quite evident to me how this is playing out.
It's interesting how the internet has undoubtedly made the "living in their own bubble" problem worse than it was before, which is the opposite of what nearly everyone expected to happen.
Here's one that came up at the weekend concerning the US Govt:
US Department of Justice writes to Georgetown University saying that it will not consider any of their law graduates for jobs (ie will bin the applications) because the curriculum contains "DEI" content.
DOJ says it won’t hire Georgetown Law Students because DOJ has “reliably” heard that Georgetown “continues to teach and promote DEI.” DOJ tells Georgetown “no applicant” who is a student at a school “that continues to teach and utilize DEI will be considered.” Putin does this. https://x.com/JoinTheUnionUS/status/1898071649787826581
If you'd told me a couple of years ago a letter like this would be sent I would have thought you a mad conspiracy theorist.
Thoughts and prayers with all the pb education experts.
That's other mince, sorry, by focussing on just year seven is a bit like deciding a football match result based on the first 10 minutes.
Spoiler alert: There are students in years other than year 7.
Surely you'd accept its less likely parents would take their kids out midway through their time at a school, and more likely they would make the switch before starting a new school?
My eldest has seen two kids leave his form since VAT kicked in.
If you're a parent with three kids in private schools you're going to have find on average nearly an extra grand a month to cover the VAT.
But if you are sending 3 kids to private school, you are already paying a lot of money, so that extra grand as a proportion of what you are already spending is not that high. An extra grand a month sounds a lot to most people, but most people couldn't ever afford to send 1, let alone 3 kids to private school.
I know a few people who sacrifice quite a bit for private education for their children. The question is proportion.
As to how many will switch? - it will take several years to work through the system. Moving a child on the "in years" is very disruptive and hence uncommon. So people will be trying to stay till the end of primary, for example.
If you send your kids to private school, your acquaintances will mostly be well off and the people impacted most by this policy will be among the less well off among that group, so it will seem like quite an unfair, even regressive, policy. Whereas, if you don't send your kids to private school, the people you know through school will be a broad mix, income wise, with fewer of the seriously rich than in the population as a whole, so the people impacted will seem relatively rich (which of course they are) and the policy will seem pretty fair. People live in their own bubble. I'm in the somewhat unusual position of being in both those bubbles at the same time (kids at state school but minted so most people I know through work send their kids private) and so it's quite evident to me how this is playing out.
How is it playing out?
Lots of moaning, no switching to the state sector.
To be honest, I could have predicted that from purely common sense.
How many people are so close to being unable to afford the fees that this change means they’ve had to now stop going? It must be a tiny minority.
The people shouting seem to have no issue with paying even with the change so my simple question is: why shouldn’t you pay?
My fundamental view remains though that we should have made state schools better before going after private schools.
State schools are by and large better than they were, although they still lack resources, and I think Covid has impacted behaviour and discipline. The extra resources from the removal of the tax break should help them improve further, at the margin.
Thoughts and prayers with all the pb education experts.
That's other mince, sorry, by focussing on just year seven is a bit like deciding a football match result based on the first 10 minutes.
Spoiler alert: There are students in years other than year 7.
Surely you'd accept its less likely parents would take their kids out midway through their time at a school, and more likely they would make the switch before starting a new school?
My eldest has seen two kids leave his form since VAT kicked in.
If you're a parent with three kids in private schools you're going to have find on average nearly an extra grand a month to cover the VAT.
But if you are sending 3 kids to private school, you are already paying a lot of money, so that extra grand as a proportion of what you are already spending is not that high. An extra grand a month sounds a lot to most people, but most people couldn't ever afford to send 1, let alone 3 kids to private school.
I know a few people who sacrifice quite a bit for private education for their children. The question is proportion.
As to how many will switch? - it will take several years to work through the system. Moving a child on the "in years" is very disruptive and hence uncommon. So people will be trying to stay till the end of primary, for example.
If you send your kids to private school, your acquaintances will mostly be well off and the people impacted most by this policy will be among the less well off among that group, so it will seem like quite an unfair, even regressive, policy. Whereas, if you don't send your kids to private school, the people you know through school will be a broad mix, income wise, with fewer of the seriously rich than in the population as a whole, so the people impacted will seem relatively rich (which of course they are) and the policy will seem pretty fair. People live in their own bubble. I'm in the somewhat unusual position of being in both those bubbles at the same time (kids at state school but minted so most people I know through work send their kids private) and so it's quite evident to me how this is playing out.
How is it playing out?
Lots of moaning, no switching to the state sector.
As Dura is around, is this part of language teaching these days ?
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/huh-the-valuable-role-of-interjections-in-human-conversations ..Other interjections can indicate that the speaker knows they’re not giving the other participant what they sought. “If you ask me what’s the weather like in Barcelona, I can say ‘Well, I haven’t been outside yet,’” says Wiltschko. The well is an acknowledgement that she’s not quite answering the question.
Wiltschko and her students have now examined more than 20 languages, and every one of them uses little words for negotiations like these. “I haven’t found a language that doesn’t do these three general things: what I know, what I think you know and turn-taking,” she says. They are key to regulating conversations, she adds: “We are building common ground, and we are taking turns.”
Details like these aren’t just arcana for linguists to obsess over. Using interjections properly is a key part of sounding fluent in speaking a second language, notes Wiltschko, but language teachers often ignore them. “When it comes to language teaching, you get points deducted for using ums and uhs, because you’re ‘not fluent,’” she says. “But native speakers use them, because it helps! They should be taught.” Artificial intelligence, too, can struggle to use interjections well, she notes, making them the best way to distinguish between a computer and a real human...
On Starlink and the reports (rumours?) of Russians suddenly knowing where all the Ukr positions are located, I think the Ukrainians will start killing the service themselves as a precaution, finding alternatives, or using longer cables with signal boosters to put it "over there".
Lots of complications, but also they are very innovative.
I only use phone masts as an example because it’s something I know. I prefer to speak to things I know in depth but I am sure it’s the same for housing and so on.
I’d support scrapping planning altogether. I am happy to accept that’s an unpopular position though.
This is probably the only thing the Chinese get right. Just build.
Have you actually visited China and seen what a fucking mess their cities are and what an environmental and human disaster their country is?
Thoughts and prayers with all the pb education experts.
That's other mince, sorry, by focussing on just year seven is a bit like deciding a football match result based on the first 10 minutes.
Spoiler alert: There are students in years other than year 7.
Surely you'd accept its less likely parents would take their kids out midway through their time at a school, and more likely they would make the switch before starting a new school?
My eldest has seen two kids leave his form since VAT kicked in.
If you're a parent with three kids in private schools you're going to have find on average nearly an extra grand a month to cover the VAT.
But if you are sending 3 kids to private school, you are already paying a lot of money, so that extra grand as a proportion of what you are already spending is not that high. An extra grand a month sounds a lot to most people, but most people couldn't ever afford to send 1, let alone 3 kids to private school.
I know a few people who sacrifice quite a bit for private education for their children. The question is proportion.
As to how many will switch? - it will take several years to work through the system. Moving a child on the "in years" is very disruptive and hence uncommon. So people will be trying to stay till the end of primary, for example.
If you send your kids to private school, your acquaintances will mostly be well off and the people impacted most by this policy will be among the less well off among that group, so it will seem like quite an unfair, even regressive, policy. Whereas, if you don't send your kids to private school, the people you know through school will be a broad mix, income wise, with fewer of the seriously rich than in the population as a whole, so the people impacted will seem relatively rich (which of course they are) and the policy will seem pretty fair. People live in their own bubble. I'm in the somewhat unusual position of being in both those bubbles at the same time (kids at state school but minted so most people I know through work send their kids private) and so it's quite evident to me how this is playing out.
How is it playing out?
Lots of moaning, no switching to the state sector.
Not true in Surrey or K & C as I posted earlier
Yes I enjoyed your highly selective cut and paste job!
@RochdalePioneers I do work in the industry and have worked with Starlink and others on deploying their technology to sites without other backhaul options. So I am talking purely from experience.
As I already said, I am not a Tesla or Starlink hater. I literally held Tesla stock for over five years, did very well out of it. Believed in what Elon and co were doing. I sold when he started becoming unhinged.
Nothing I have said is wrong.
I said the latency is terrible. It is. You posted one anecdotal example. I told you it is not consistent. It isn’t.
You said FTTP is not ubiquitous. It will be. It will cover 99%+ of premises by 2030. Will Starlink have a place to cover the minority of premises left behind. Yes but it is not a replacement.
Can it work on trains. I didn’t say it couldn’t, I said it was inferior in every way to trackside infrastructure and doesn’t work where there are obstructions. I also pointed out that Network Rail already has assessed it’s a non-starter and hence went for DAS and other trackside 4G/5G neutral host instead.
I have no issues with Starlink beyond pointing out its technical deficiencies. Now to be fair that is just the case for OneWeb which if you’d said that, I would have said the same things.
So what do you want from me? You said that Starlink was useless for business use because the latency was terrible and wouldn't work for meetings. I'm literally sat on a Teams meeting as I type this. I've just run speed test several times. Consistently 30ish MS latency and 100MB down speed.
I can't get maybe a third of that from 4G. There is no 5G. And FTTC broadband was woefully inconsistent where sitting in meetings like this I would get thrown out as it buffered. I have never had any buffer issues with Starlink.
So ok, from your technical perspective "latency is terrible". From mine it is great. You insisted that I can't do what I am doing. But I can...
I forget what BCH does for a living but I remember all his wailing about not being allowed to put phone masts anywhere and everywhere. So I assume, based solely on that and his current obsession with dissing Starlink at every opportunity, that he has some connection with the mobile industry.
I can diss OneWeb too if you’d like. It’s equally shite at scale.
Do you oppose my suggestion that planning should be liberalised especially for key infrastructure?
In the way you suggest, yes.
You are one of those who apparently knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
Incidentally, as Tesla cars are highly connected, how easy would it be for them or another actor to get mad at a country or individual and either disallow the car's use, or brick them via an over-the-air update?
I'm not saying they would do this; just asking if it is a reasonable attack vector.
@RochdalePioneers I do work in the industry and have worked with Starlink and others on deploying their technology to sites without other backhaul options. So I am talking purely from experience.
As I already said, I am not a Tesla or Starlink hater. I literally held Tesla stock for over five years, did very well out of it. Believed in what Elon and co were doing. I sold when he started becoming unhinged.
Nothing I have said is wrong.
I said the latency is terrible. It is. You posted one anecdotal example. I told you it is not consistent. It isn’t.
You said FTTP is not ubiquitous. It will be. It will cover 99%+ of premises by 2030. Will Starlink have a place to cover the minority of premises left behind. Yes but it is not a replacement.
Can it work on trains. I didn’t say it couldn’t, I said it was inferior in every way to trackside infrastructure and doesn’t work where there are obstructions. I also pointed out that Network Rail already has assessed it’s a non-starter and hence went for DAS and other trackside 4G/5G neutral host instead.
I have no issues with Starlink beyond pointing out its technical deficiencies. Now to be fair that is just the case for OneWeb which if you’d said that, I would have said the same things.
So what do you want from me? You said that Starlink was useless for business use because the latency was terrible and wouldn't work for meetings. I'm literally sat on a Teams meeting as I type this. I've just run speed test several times. Consistently 30ish MS latency and 100MB down speed.
I can't get maybe a third of that from 4G. There is no 5G. And FTTC broadband was woefully inconsistent where sitting in meetings like this I would get thrown out as it buffered. I have never had any buffer issues with Starlink.
So ok, from your technical perspective "latency is terrible". From mine it is great. You insisted that I can't do what I am doing. But I can...
I forget what BCH does for a living but I remember all his wailing about not being allowed to put phone masts anywhere and everywhere. So I assume, based solely on that and his current obsession with dissing Starlink at every opportunity, that he has some connection with the mobile industry.
I can diss OneWeb too if you’d like. It’s equally shite at scale.
Do you oppose my suggestion that planning should be liberalised especially for key infrastructure?
In the way you suggest, yes.
You are one of those who apparently knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
May I know why? Do you not think better coverage is important?
I only use phone masts as an example because it’s something I know. I prefer to speak to things I know in depth but I am sure it’s the same for housing and so on.
I’d support scrapping planning altogether. I am happy to accept that’s an unpopular position though.
This is probably the only thing the Chinese get right. Just build.
Have you actually visited China and seen what a fucking mess their cities are and what an environmental and human disaster their country is?
It's bizarre. Particularly in Scotland, where we have genuinely world-class landscapes like Torridon/Assynt/Hebrides and people are castigated for expressing a concern about plopping masts, turbines and pylons all over them.
@RochdalePioneers I do work in the industry and have worked with Starlink and others on deploying their technology to sites without other backhaul options. So I am talking purely from experience.
As I already said, I am not a Tesla or Starlink hater. I literally held Tesla stock for over five years, did very well out of it. Believed in what Elon and co were doing. I sold when he started becoming unhinged.
Nothing I have said is wrong.
I said the latency is terrible. It is. You posted one anecdotal example. I told you it is not consistent. It isn’t.
You said FTTP is not ubiquitous. It will be. It will cover 99%+ of premises by 2030. Will Starlink have a place to cover the minority of premises left behind. Yes but it is not a replacement.
Can it work on trains. I didn’t say it couldn’t, I said it was inferior in every way to trackside infrastructure and doesn’t work where there are obstructions. I also pointed out that Network Rail already has assessed it’s a non-starter and hence went for DAS and other trackside 4G/5G neutral host instead.
I have no issues with Starlink beyond pointing out its technical deficiencies. Now to be fair that is just the case for OneWeb which if you’d said that, I would have said the same things.
So what do you want from me? You said that Starlink was useless for business use because the latency was terrible and wouldn't work for meetings. I'm literally sat on a Teams meeting as I type this. I've just run speed test several times. Consistently 30ish MS latency and 100MB down speed.
I can't get maybe a third of that from 4G. There is no 5G. And FTTC broadband was woefully inconsistent where sitting in meetings like this I would get thrown out as it buffered. I have never had any buffer issues with Starlink.
So ok, from your technical perspective "latency is terrible". From mine it is great. You insisted that I can't do what I am doing. But I can...
I forget what BCH does for a living but I remember all his wailing about not being allowed to put phone masts anywhere and everywhere. So I assume, based solely on that and his current obsession with dissing Starlink at every opportunity, that he has some connection with the mobile industry.
I can diss OneWeb too if you’d like. It’s equally shite at scale.
Do you oppose my suggestion that planning should be liberalised especially for key infrastructure?
In the way you suggest, yes.
You are one of those who apparently knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
May I know why? Do you not think better coverage is important?
Not if it’s going to ruin the view from large parts of the Lakes and the Dales given 1 planning application that you thought was a good idea which was refused
For reference the application wasn’t to fix no signal areas it was to improve signal along the M6 where to be frank drivers should be concentrating on the road
As Dura is around, is this part of language teaching these days ?
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/huh-the-valuable-role-of-interjections-in-human-conversations ..Other interjections can indicate that the speaker knows they’re not giving the other participant what they sought. “If you ask me what’s the weather like in Barcelona, I can say ‘Well, I haven’t been outside yet,’” says Wiltschko. The well is an acknowledgement that she’s not quite answering the question.
Wiltschko and her students have now examined more than 20 languages, and every one of them uses little words for negotiations like these. “I haven’t found a language that doesn’t do these three general things: what I know, what I think you know and turn-taking,” she says. They are key to regulating conversations, she adds: “We are building common ground, and we are taking turns.”
Details like these aren’t just arcana for linguists to obsess over. Using interjections properly is a key part of sounding fluent in speaking a second language, notes Wiltschko, but language teachers often ignore them. “When it comes to language teaching, you get points deducted for using ums and uhs, because you’re ‘not fluent,’” she says. “But native speakers use them, because it helps! They should be taught.” Artificial intelligence, too, can struggle to use interjections well, she notes, making them the best way to distinguish between a computer and a real human...
There is a difference between um/ah and other non-verbal fillers and interjections like 'well' which serve a valid purpose as an intensifier.
I don't know any language teacher that teaches them or any test or exam that wouldn't penalise for them on an oral.
E2A: In Russian (which you'd all better bone up on in case SKS doesn't hit his 5%) they are known as слова-паразиты (lit. 'parasite words'). When I was studying at Moscow State University the tutor would, physically if necessry, throw you out of the tutorial if you used even one.
On Starlink and the reports (rumours?) of Russians suddenly knowing where all the Ukr positions are located, I think the Ukrainians will start killing the service themselves as a precaution, finding alternatives, or using longer cables with signal boosters to put it "over there".
Lots of complications, but also they are very innovative.
Starlink emits signals which can be detected by adversaries; it's not designed as a military system. That's been known for a long time.
I think the more likely reason for these stories is that turning off US support has crippled Ukraine's ability to closely track Russian movements, or conduct Himars strikes. That's coincided (fortuitously, or planned) with a large scale Russian effort involving new drone forces, and a fresh bunch of N Koreans, to retake the Kursk gains.
It may just be more bad guys targeting their positions.
@RochdalePioneers I do work in the industry and have worked with Starlink and others on deploying their technology to sites without other backhaul options. So I am talking purely from experience.
As I already said, I am not a Tesla or Starlink hater. I literally held Tesla stock for over five years, did very well out of it. Believed in what Elon and co were doing. I sold when he started becoming unhinged.
Nothing I have said is wrong.
I said the latency is terrible. It is. You posted one anecdotal example. I told you it is not consistent. It isn’t.
You said FTTP is not ubiquitous. It will be. It will cover 99%+ of premises by 2030. Will Starlink have a place to cover the minority of premises left behind. Yes but it is not a replacement.
Can it work on trains. I didn’t say it couldn’t, I said it was inferior in every way to trackside infrastructure and doesn’t work where there are obstructions. I also pointed out that Network Rail already has assessed it’s a non-starter and hence went for DAS and other trackside 4G/5G neutral host instead.
I have no issues with Starlink beyond pointing out its technical deficiencies. Now to be fair that is just the case for OneWeb which if you’d said that, I would have said the same things.
So what do you want from me? You said that Starlink was useless for business use because the latency was terrible and wouldn't work for meetings. I'm literally sat on a Teams meeting as I type this. I've just run speed test several times. Consistently 30ish MS latency and 100MB down speed.
I can't get maybe a third of that from 4G. There is no 5G. And FTTC broadband was woefully inconsistent where sitting in meetings like this I would get thrown out as it buffered. I have never had any buffer issues with Starlink.
So ok, from your technical perspective "latency is terrible". From mine it is great. You insisted that I can't do what I am doing. But I can...
I forget what BCH does for a living but I remember all his wailing about not being allowed to put phone masts anywhere and everywhere. So I assume, based solely on that and his current obsession with dissing Starlink at every opportunity, that he has some connection with the mobile industry.
I can diss OneWeb too if you’d like. It’s equally shite at scale.
Do you oppose my suggestion that planning should be liberalised especially for key infrastructure?
In the way you suggest, yes.
You are one of those who apparently knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
May I know why? Do you not think better coverage is important?
Not if it’s going to ruin the view from large parts of the Lakes and the Dales given 1 planning application that you thought was a good idea which was refused
That application should have been approved. No question about it.
Incidentally, as Tesla cars are highly connected, how easy would it be for them or another actor to get mad at a country or individual and either disallow the car's use, or brick them via an over-the-air update?
I'm not saying they would do this; just asking if it is a reasonable attack vector.
It's probably doable. But then so is killing every Volvo with remote start/unlock.
As Dura is around, is this part of language teaching these days ?
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/huh-the-valuable-role-of-interjections-in-human-conversations ..Other interjections can indicate that the speaker knows they’re not giving the other participant what they sought. “If you ask me what’s the weather like in Barcelona, I can say ‘Well, I haven’t been outside yet,’” says Wiltschko. The well is an acknowledgement that she’s not quite answering the question.
Wiltschko and her students have now examined more than 20 languages, and every one of them uses little words for negotiations like these. “I haven’t found a language that doesn’t do these three general things: what I know, what I think you know and turn-taking,” she says. They are key to regulating conversations, she adds: “We are building common ground, and we are taking turns.”
Details like these aren’t just arcana for linguists to obsess over. Using interjections properly is a key part of sounding fluent in speaking a second language, notes Wiltschko, but language teachers often ignore them. “When it comes to language teaching, you get points deducted for using ums and uhs, because you’re ‘not fluent,’” she says. “But native speakers use them, because it helps! They should be taught.” Artificial intelligence, too, can struggle to use interjections well, she notes, making them the best way to distinguish between a computer and a real human...
There is a difference between um/ah and other non-verbal fillers and interjections like 'well' which serve a valid purpose as an intensifier.
I don't know any language teacher that teaches them or any test or exam that wouldn't penalise for them on an oral.
Comments
In the case of what we are seeing in the US, if it's not full-fat fascism it's functionally very similar and the main differences are being seeded in different eras. Musk etc have an outlook that for their version of the 'greater good' only people they deem as being of high value, matter. Hence why can simultaneously welcoming to very wealthy people from minorities and support their freedom, and yet unbelievably cruel to everyone else. If that sounds pretty fascist, it's because it is.
If you take the formal definition of fascism (loosely summarised as the conflation of state and corporations in the exercise of power, with a veneer of militaristic national alien) rather than the common usage it’s much closer…
For example his appearance at an AFD rally in Germany one week before the election, and his lauding of their leader Alice Weidel.
@NickPalmer may know in more detail than me their effective policy about deporting naturalised German citizens who are migrants. It's not explicit, but afaics it is there.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62q937y029o
As I already said, I am not a Tesla or Starlink hater. I literally held Tesla stock for over five years, did very well out of it. Believed in what Elon and co were doing. I sold when he started becoming unhinged.
Nothing I have said is wrong.
I said the latency is terrible. It is. You posted one anecdotal example. I told you it is not consistent. It isn’t.
You said FTTP is not ubiquitous. It will be. It will cover 99%+ of premises by 2030. Will Starlink have a place to cover the minority of premises left behind. Yes but it is not a replacement.
Can it work on trains. I didn’t say it couldn’t, I said it was inferior in every way to trackside infrastructure and doesn’t work where there are obstructions. I also pointed out that Network Rail already has assessed it’s a non-starter and hence went for DAS and other trackside 4G/5G neutral host instead.
I have no issues with Starlink beyond pointing out its technical deficiencies. Now to be fair that is just the case for OneWeb which if you’d said that, I would have said the same things.
Like ATC, maybe DEI was the only thing making the department run properly
I was rather more compromised back in 2014, and I say this with a large degree of shame. For sometime one of my largest clients was Rosneft. There’s an engagement letter out there in the ether signed by me and countersigned by Igor Sechin. So I was visiting Moscow and giving advice as the little green men marched into Crimea and the sanctions landed. And I didn’t stop straightaway because it would have been tricky, there was lots of money at stake and I was making mental distinctions between the project and The Project.
I even went back to Moscow in 2018 to do a seminar, just before the World Cup.
All of that makes me in hindsight complicit in the normalising and trade-washing that Putin’s government played on the West, and indeed complicit (ok in a tiny, immaterial way) in the hydrocarbon economy that they established to fund their rearming and blackmail the West.
We tell ourselves all sorts of stories to protect our own sense of morality.
“We are keeping a close watch on how changes to private school VAT may impact state school admission rates. While this doesn’t present an immediate problem, some secondary schools in Kensington and Chelsea are now seeing higher levels of oversubscription...."
It's not economic techno-fascism, because they don't support a command economy.
This virtue signalling nonsense does grate.
But judging others for not taking part is just stupid.
In any case, as a user why should I have to go through all of this effort when it used to work fine? From a UX point of view this is me compensating for deficiencies in their product.
Starlink costs few billion a year to launch satellites and run them. We are already on board with OneWeb. We should be looking at our own mega constellation. Which would probably *make* money.
But that would mean building a cheap launch capability. And that would mean building things. And We Can't Do That. See BritVolt.
We should do similarly for wind farms.
People living near new pylons in Great Britain could get £250 a year off energy bills
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/mar/10/pylons-great-britain-energy-bills-uk-economy
Perhaps we can equally explain away Elon's Heil Hitler salute as satire too.
I can understand your and others anger, but I will not join the pile on to @RochdalePioneers as seen this morning, and even though he and I have different politics, a sense of proportion is needed
Though as I said earlier I will not be buying a Tesla or any ev, as petrol cars will be available to 2035 and beyond by which time I will be in my 90s and my wife near 100, depending on the Good Lords generosity !!!!!
5G already works out in the open. It doesn’t work when you go into tunnels or cuttings but there are solutions to resolve that. There aren’t any for Starlink.
Can 5G work on trains. Yes, all the time.
So one solution is objectively superior to the other. Can Starlink be a backup or last resort. Yes.
They will install a solution in the tunnel eventually, leaky feeder style it will be.
SWR did something sort of similar with Rail5G which seems to have been canned now they’re disappearing.
The money you are advocating spending would be far more than the cost of installing trackside 5G.
As to how many will switch? - it will take several years to work through the system. Moving a child on the "in years" is very disruptive and hence uncommon. So people will be trying to stay till the end of primary, for example.
I can't get maybe a third of that from 4G. There is no 5G. And FTTC broadband was woefully inconsistent where sitting in meetings like this I would get thrown out as it buffered. I have never had any buffer issues with Starlink.
So ok, from your technical perspective "latency is terrible". From mine it is great. You insisted that I can't do what I am doing. But I can...
To be fair 4G/5G aren’t a replacement for FTTP either.
I am very glad it works for you. I am just saying that it’s not a solution at scale.
I can assure you that 20-30ms of latency is not guaranteed and is one of the reasons it is restricted to mainly data where latency is not as much of an issue. I looked at it for backhaul for a while and it’s just too inconsistent to support a large number of phone calls.
Immoral, dangerous and wrong will do for me.
What we need is to actually do things. Not talk about doing them. Not have consultations about doing them. Or reports on the social impact of doing them. Not learn lessons about doing them.
Actually do stuff.
It's a choice - if Liberal Democracy doesn't deliver, then other offers are available.
Starlink will be increasing embedded in the infrastructure of the world. We can either offer an alternative to airline, the countries wiring up their mobile networks with it as backhaul etc etc. And, as a benefit have control of our own military capability (ask the Ukrainians what it is worth).
Or we can depend on Starlink, Kuiper and the coming Chinese alternatives.
For now I still find it useful enough to make the effort. Blocking still works, except that it doesn't prevent the blockee stalking you. It does take them our of your feed, though.
So far, Starmer is, marginally, better.
@SkyNews
A plane carrying five people crashed into a retirement home car park in Pennsylvania on Sunday
That was still the end of the space optimism period. By the late '90"s, none of Musk's slacker cohort had his interest in Mars.
Do you oppose my suggestion that planning should be liberalised especially for key infrastructure?
People live in their own bubble. I'm in the somewhat unusual position of being in both those bubbles at the same time (kids at state school but minted so most people I know through work send their kids private) and so it's quite evident to me how this is playing out.
But then again, there were a number of useless chancers running the government.
I’d support scrapping planning altogether. I am happy to accept that’s an unpopular position though.
This is probably the only thing the Chinese get right. Just build.
Boys widen gap over girls in maths and science in England, study reveals
Analysis of post-Covid performance overturns recent claims that boys are falling behind girls at school
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/mar/10/boys-widen-gap-over-girls-in-maths-and-science-in-england-study-reveals
Average fees per annum for private schooling in the UK are £18k per annum. For three children that is £54k per annum, or £4.5k per month. That gives 20% per month as £900 if assume a 20% increase is due to VAT.
Since VAT is a tax on outputs-inputs, it should logically be less than a 20% overall rise, unless the provider is taking advantage.
In fact, the average increase is reported by the Telegraph as 14%, quoted here:
https://moneyweek.com/personal-finance/managing-higher-private-school-fees
But inflation is around 3% in the last 6 months, and higher before that. So if we take inflation off that 14% (and school fees have increased at more than inflation pretty much every year in the last 20 years) that brings it down to 11% due to the VAT.
And if we recognise the historical trend of underlying fee increases being 1.5-2% or so above inflation that knocks it down to under 10%.
Which puts the actual impact of VAT in those circs at more like £450-500 per month.
That is still a chunk, but I think this is overegged. Perhaps they need to do what is expected of the state and increase their efficiency.
How many people are so close to being unable to afford the fees that this change means they’ve had to now stop going? It must be a tiny minority.
The people shouting seem to have no issue with paying even with the change so my simple question is: why shouldn’t you pay?
My fundamental view remains though that we should have made state schools better before going after private schools.
Mark Kelly could do that nicely I think.
Mind you, I have a fairly high opinion of rats.
Rats can distinguish (and generalize) among two white wine varieties
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-025-01937-2
There is roughly the same (small) proportion of children going to private secondaries as in previous years, from what I can see. Some on full fees, some on scholarships or bursaries. 4 or 5 in the year.
A couple got into grammar schools in Kent, which means a big commute. The rest are going to one of the - generally pretty good - state schools in the area and one managed to get through the entry lottery to the wildly oversubscribed Kingsdale school in Dulwich.
But generally London schools are way less full than they were a decade ago as local demographics have collapsed.
Lets assume that Musk switches it off tomorrow. I revert back to an alternative. Same if he turns it off next month. Next year. If that happens then we revert back to the slower laggier alternatives, but have had the benefit of the superior faster product.
I'm unclear where the downsides are.
In politics there is a real problem with dismissing real world lived experience because actually I know more than you and actually the stats show that what you have in the real world you actually don't actually.
I think Horse is a great poster but repeatedly he has told me that my lived experience of using Starlink isn't real. Translate that into politics and we have the Tories putting up taxes and trying to tell people that the big tax rise eating into their net pay on their payslip is actually a cut actually, or one of a myriad of Labour topics where they are right and the voters are wrong. I can still picture the Momentum activist literally finger jabbing at a guy on his doorstep berating him about how he was wrong about the stuff he was saying about his life.
The header is about Reform - and they're doing very well by not falling into this trap of telling people they are wrong when they describe their lives. We can disagree with a political or philosophical perspective, but when that translates into insisting that lived experience is wrong then you've lost.
Trump introduced Musk, who took control of the meeting, declaring the country would “go bankrupt” if he were not allowed to destroy the government untrammeled. He stood above the cabinet secretaries, wearing all black, a T-shirt reading “Tech Support”, a black Maga cap, and condescended: “And President Trump has put together, I think, the best cabinet ever, literally.” The questions came from the reporters in the room. The nervous cabinet members sat silently, worried about not one but two overlords. Musk was asked questions about his demand that federal employees justify their work every week and wondered how many “you’re looking to cut, total”. Musk gave no answer. Trump intervened: “We’re bloated, we’re sloppy."
Unusually honest self assessment there.
Having the mass in Latin, as was the usual case before Vatican II in the mid 1960s, also ensured it was the same in every nation even if it is now normally done in the language of the nation it is held in.
Support for the Latin Mass is a good way of distinguishing conservative from liberal Roman Catholics though, hence VP Vance also a fan of Latin Masses
I am not trying to deny your lived experience, what I am denying is that it is a solution that can work for the vast majority. That is all.
Once again, this is purely a technical argument. I’d make the same arguments about OneWeb.
As I’ve said repeatedly: use Starlink as you wish. The fact you’re being told not to by a bunch of virtue signallers is becoming very boring.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/huh-the-valuable-role-of-interjections-in-human-conversations
..Other interjections can indicate that the speaker knows they’re not giving the other participant what they sought. “If you ask me what’s the weather like in Barcelona, I can say ‘Well, I haven’t been outside yet,’” says Wiltschko. The well is an acknowledgement that she’s not quite answering the question.
Wiltschko and her students have now examined more than 20 languages, and every one of them uses little words for negotiations like these. “I haven’t found a language that doesn’t do these three general things: what I know, what I think you know and turn-taking,” she says. They are key to regulating conversations, she adds: “We are building common ground, and we are taking turns.”
Details like these aren’t just arcana for linguists to obsess over. Using interjections properly is a key part of sounding fluent in speaking a second language, notes Wiltschko, but language teachers often ignore them. “When it comes to language teaching, you get points deducted for using ums and uhs, because you’re ‘not fluent,’” she says. “But native speakers use them, because it helps! They should be taught.” Artificial intelligence, too, can struggle to use interjections well, she notes, making them the best way to distinguish between a computer and a real human...
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1898985197363724539
Lots of complications, but also they are very innovative.
You are one of those who apparently knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
I'm not saying they would do this; just asking if it is a reasonable attack vector.
Money first then vote, fatso.
For reference the application wasn’t to fix no signal areas it was to improve signal along the M6 where to be frank drivers should be concentrating on the road
I don't know any language teacher that teaches them or any test or exam that wouldn't penalise for them on an oral.
E2A: In Russian (which you'd all better bone up on in case SKS doesn't hit his 5%) they are known as слова-паразиты (lit. 'parasite words'). When I was studying at Moscow State University the tutor would, physically if necessry, throw you out of the tutorial if you used even one.
I think the more likely reason for these stories is that turning off US support has crippled Ukraine's ability to closely track Russian movements, or conduct Himars strikes. That's coincided (fortuitously, or planned) with a large scale Russian effort involving new drone forces, and a fresh bunch of N Koreans, to retake the Kursk gains.
It may just be more bad guys targeting their positions.