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Ukrainian surface drones had Starlink comms disabled on direct Musk's orders (web.archive.org)
submitted 1 year ago by skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de to c/techtakes@awful.systems
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of course he was afraid of russian nuukes. this only prompted Ukrainian engineers to bypass use of starlink entirely and current sea drones, like the one used in second Kerch bridge strike, or these used against SIG tanker and Olenegorsky Gornyak landing ship use domestic technology only

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[–] gerikson@awful.systems 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Russian propagandists tell people what they want to hear. For longtermists like Muskovitj, it's fear of Global Thermonuclear War. For trads, it's Orthodox faith and subjugation of women. For fascists, it's implied antisemitism and general racism. For tankies, it's having a counterweight to American imperialism.

The stupid thing is that medium to long term, Musk would sell more Teslas and Starlinks to a free unoccupied Ukraine than a broke Russia under permanent sanctions. But I guess he finds the other arguments intriguing.

[–] wagesj45@kbin.social 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think Musk is a man driven by what is in his self interest. He has some underlying pathology that drives him to be his own worst enemy. He's a lot like Trump in that regard.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Personally my mental model of Musk is that whenever he does something, I think, “is this what an idiot who thinks he will eventually go to mars would do?” Then it’s really a matter of figuring out the path to the answer being yes. Can’t go to mars if you die from nuclear war, or something. I don’t try very hard to think about this.

[–] self@awful.systems 8 points 1 year ago

he is absolutely practicing which buttons to push to end an eventual Martian worker rebellion

[–] jonhendry@iosdev.space 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

@swlabr @wagesj45

Can't go to Mars if your massive satellite constellation (plus competitors) results in enough space junk to make reaching orbit difficult.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Starlink causing a Kessler event and grounding all spaceflight would be delicious irony, but I believe their orbits are too low for this to be a problem. Instead they just annoy astronomers and Russians.

[–] jonhendry@iosdev.space 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

@gerikson

On the other hand, Kessler wrote: "Some of the most environmentally dangerous activities in space include large constellations such as those initially proposed by the Strategic Defense Initiative in the mid-1980s"

SDI's Brilliant Pebbles originally proposed a 10,000 unit LEO constellation.

Starlink is already close to 5,000, and Musk wants 30,000. Add in the Chinese effort estimated at ~13,000. OneWeb has 500-600 up there.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ugh apparently it won't stop Starships from fucking off to Mars

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome#Implications

However, even a catastrophic Kessler scenario at LEO would pose minimal risk for launches continuing past LEO, or satellites travelling at medium Earth orbit (MEO) or geosynchronous orbit (GEO).

OTOH the faster Musk fucks off the better so ...

[–] jonhendry@iosdev.space 4 points 1 year ago

@gerikson

"would pose minimal risk for launches continuing past LEO"

I suppose so, and yet you could say the same about aircraft flying over the launch site on launch day. A collision is unlikely due to the speed of the rocket and the short time it would be at aircraft altitudes.

But I'm pretty sure they still don't want anyone flying over the launch pad.

[–] jonhendry@iosdev.space 3 points 1 year ago

@gerikson

Even if it doesn't rapidly degenerate into a full-blown Kessler Event, I'd have to think there'd be enough going on there to increase uncertainty and risk.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 6 points 1 year ago

That’s what the flamethrowers are for.

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

nukes were never on the table, and the reason why is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWKGYnO0Jf4

[–] okamiueru@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

Shouldn't be up to him. I'd consider treason charges for this. Of course, he'll suffer no consequences as always

[–] CookieJarObserver@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago

Man the us government should just size starlink now because its objectively helping Russia.

[–] saucerwizard@awful.systems 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But here I thought nuclear war wasn’t an x-risk!

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It is if you think you and your babymommy are the only real people in the simulation.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

remember that he doesn't think she's real either

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Really? I thought he mentioned that she felt like a special fascie manic dream girl and they both seemed not simulated. Guess it all changed after she danced as a robot at the human in a robot suit presentation.

[–] self@awful.systems 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

somehow y’all got “I wanna be software” stuck in my head again

if nothing else, grimes develops a damn effective virus for the human psyche

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Her music is not for me, but a lot of people are quite big fans, so I will have to take your word for that.

Im a bit more oldschool in my transhumanist upgrades. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBEUwkvNbks&list=PLnSG0OA5vYnTLQ77f5EmLoW52vIX5jAAK&index=10 Yes, replace the weak flesh Omnidaddy. (That and heavy metal ;) )

[–] self@awful.systems 4 points 1 year ago

her music is also not for me, but listening critically to her last single appears to have damaged something deep inside my brain

the Mechanicus soundtrack fucking slaps! I really should hook the good amp up to my steam deck and do another playthrough soon

[–] jonhendry@awful.systems 2 points 1 year ago

I'd think being there to take a photo of her mid-Caesarian section would have convinced him otherwise.

[–] downpunxx@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)
[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

fyi images posted from kbin this way aren't visible on lemmy for some reason

[–] ShittyKopper@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

lemmy is the mastodon of the threadiverse in that it invents a standard and expects everyone to follow it and because it's the largest of it's type you can't really do anything about it

i bet what's going on is that kbin is attaching images in the mastodon/microblog way and lemmy expects inline markdown images and doesn't try to extract the attached images.

(fun fact: lemmy custom emojis are just "macros" for markdown images and not real emojis like the rest of the fedi standardized on (which is how you get things like the hexbear problem of remote emojis being gigantic))

[–] self@awful.systems 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

lemmy has a lot of questionable design decisions, and the justifications I’ve seen for them on GitHub have very frequently been disappointing

on the other hand, it’s a lot easier for me to understand and modify lemmy’s rust-based stack than it is for me to comprehend the PHP kbin is written in, which is a big part of why this instance ended up with lemmy

with that said, holy fuck am I looking forward to contributing to a lemmy fork with better development priorities one of these days

[–] ShittyKopper@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i'd love to take a peek at a "glitch-soc for lemmy" but not that many people seem keen enough to fork and take on the responsibility of maintaining the jank.

that said i know of at least 2 instance specific forks (pawb.social's and programming.dev's), yet neither of them seem to have produced anything worthwhile just yet.

[–] self@awful.systems 7 points 1 year ago

I’m in a similar boat. ours is also a minor instance-specific fork, though trying to get our changes upstreamed is on my todo list (as are more changes — it’s kind of amazing how threadbare lemmy’s mod tools are, when a lot of them wouldn’t even be hard to implement)

[–] downpunxx@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

not a fan of lemmy, probably having something to do with the fact it's namesake was a man who owned the largest personal collection of nazi memorabilia for years until he died, so, tough titty i guess

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

thanks for your future hypothetical non-fatuous contributions

[–] CluckN@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I also heard he named it Lemmy because whenever he saw a litter of kittens he’d strap on his steel-toed boots and go, “Lemmy at them”.

[–] lemonheep@cdrom.tokyo 2 points 1 year ago

@downpunxx @skillissuer “Great idea to let companies continue to have a monopoly on a resource instead of nationalizing it. They totally won’t take advantage of being the only real option for people and not being controlled by the government (and therefore accountable to the people).”

And people are still not suspicious with what Elon is doing??? :neofox_angry:

[–] markvonwahlde@mastodon.world -2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

@downpunxx LOL. That would be Musk's wildest dream. The just compensation he would get would be astounding. Better to tax his space stuff...enough so that we could afford the regulatory apparatus sufficient to protect ourselves from it......

[–] downpunxx@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

stupidity like this isn't inherent, it has to be strived for. congratulations.

[–] jonhendry@awful.systems 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There's a SCOTUS case that says the government only has to pay a fair market value, not the "inflated by the government's need for the property" value. In the case a guy had bought a tugboat and fixed it up quite a bit. When WW2 started the government sought to buy it, and he insisted on a price well above the cost of the boat and the improvements, arguing that WW2 had increased demand so he should get a higher price.

So Musk would get a lot, but maybe not as much you'd think.

[–] markvonwahlde@mastodon.world -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@jonhendry Another huge reason why nationalization would be really stupid. Starlink's value can be dichotomized into two categories: (1) Business activity that conflicts with US foreign policy, and (2) Business activity that doesn't conflict with US foreign policy. I suspect the latter value vastly exceeds the former value. In a condemnation proceeding, the US would have to buy the whole kit and kaboodle--what a waste. Then...managing Starlink's business as a federal entity (wtf?)....

[–] self@awful.systems 3 points 1 year ago

it’s weird that the only thing you’ve posted in this thread is links to wav files of the sound of guillotine blades cutting through the air

[–] markvonwahlde@mastodon.world -1 points 1 year ago

@jonhendry Yeah...but such a trial may require a jury, and that uncertainty very often ups the market value considerably above FMV. It would be stupid to nationalize, given the property is not unique (like real property), presents no barrier to entry. Besides, regulation and taxation are available.