Elon Musk - The Master thread

[TheBeastie]

Hi guys.
I figured Elon Musk deserves a master thread, as he does so much stuff from digging super holes via his "Boring Company" to aiming to cover the world with internet via his Starlink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_(satellite_constellation)

I know I like to criticise a lot but I am a fan of Elon Musk and all the stuff he is doing, there's not that many people really changing the world out there, so its good to see someone make bold steps, but of course that can come with criticism.
Elon Musk is active on Twitter https://twitter.com/elonmusk . I used to think Twitter was dumb years ago but I have become to really like it as my preferred major social media for casual browsing for information/news.

Right now I just can't believe Elon won his court case against Unsworth, successfully getting away with calling him a "pedo". I now noticed on Twitter that fair amount of people are going crazy calling each others "pedo" etc since the court ruling...
Take your pick on the news source, tradition web article or video.
Tesla boss Elon Musk wins defamation trial over his 'pedo guy' tweet
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-musk-lawsuit/tesla-boss-elon-musk-wins-defamation-trial-sparked-by-pedo-guy-tweet-idUSKBN1YA13U
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-06/elon-musk-beats-back-defamation-lawsuit-over-insulting-tweet
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/06/unsworth-vs-musk-pedo-guy-defamation-trial-verdict.html
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/06/media/elon-musk-defamation-trial-verdict/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/06/business/elon-musk-defamation-verdict.html
https://gizmodo.com/jury-rules-you-can-call-elon-musk-a-pedo-guy-1840278623?IR=T

[youtube]nqH4MFdvFAA[/youtube]

 

[TheBeastie]

Apparently it was Elon Musk behind the wheel of the Cyber Truck when he ran this red light traffic signal.
Oh, I wish this forum supported Twitter video embedding...

https://twitter.com/Guruleaks1/status/1203755558609641472?s=20

 

[Dauntless]

All it really means is that, despite it all, he's still a billionaire, still leaving a charmed life. I daresay it will always be just fine for him. Always.

 

[TheBeastie]

One thing I frequently wondered about is how could it be "that important" for self driving cars to need regular Tesla drivers with the cameras fixed inside the car to "teach the AI" to learn how to drive...

It seemed kind of dodgy to me until I learned that the only way computers cracked the code for reliable speech recognition was via the exact same method, which is the process of "teaching" the AI to understand human language...

Take this example this Scottish? speaking guy, it is very difficult for me as an Australian to understand, and I would bet a lot of Americans would have trouble understanding what he is saying, but he is speaking real English with a very heavy accent...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bDIJDImmw8
But all you have to do is click on the "CC" button next to the YouTube settings cog and it turns on "automatic captioning". This is where Youtube in realtime analyzes the language and puts it in text subtitles for you on the fly. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6373554?hl=en "YouTube can use speech recognition technology to automatically create captions for your videos. These automatic captions are generated by machine learning algorithms"

So if you wondered why Tesla's stock is valued more than other car companies when they generally lose money annually it's really because a lot of Tesla invested fund managers believe that with enough Tesla EVs on the road and its Tesla drivers "training" the Tesla AI when they have autopilot enabled on their cars that it will slowly learn 99.9% of what to do in most situations, and this will be enough to outdrive the average crap human driver.
Having the key AI algorithm that can replace drivers is apparently worth $1trillion dollars, some people have claimed.

https://twitter.com/auto_schmidt/status/1202155777802280961?s=20

It's the same thing with the Boston Dynamics robots, if you have been watching their videos over the last 10 years the robots physically haven't changed much at all, but in that time they have started to do be able to engage and react in truly remarkable ways in the physical environment, this is again the process of teaching the AI rather than anything else...
[youtube]fRj34o4hN4I[/youtube]

 

[TheBeastie]

All it really means is that, despite it all, he's still a billionaire, still leaving a charmed life. I daresay it will always be just fine for him. Always.

Yeah.
Here is another new article on the dirty side of Musk... its a bit of a musk read :lol:
Sounds like Musk probably spent about ?$1million? just on private investigations on Unsworth just to find out he was squeaky clean.

Elon Musk's private eye rifled through cave hero's bins to dig up dirt on his private life: Vernon Unsworth tells all after losing court battle against Tesla tycoon who called him 'pedo guy'

• Cave rescuer breaks his silence on his 'David and Goliath' battle with Elon Musk

• Vernon Unsworth reveals he was subjected to four investigations by Thai police

• He says these investigations were sparked by 'pedo guy' comment by Mr Musk

• Billionaire's aides hired private investigator who said he could 'dig dirt' on him

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7792903/Hero-saved-12-Thai-boys-reveals-Elon-Musks-private-eye-rifled-bins.html

 

[TheBeastie]

On the subject 2nd above post https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=103622#p1515561 about Tesla's AI and it is the real cause of Tesla's remarkable stock price value, here is a pretty dumb article from CNET on how Tesla has finally hit that magical $420 stock market price that he originally lied about in a tweet saying he had a buyout offer for $420 to take Tesla private about and had to pay $20million over.

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-420-stock-holiday-elon-musk-weed/?12610429=undefined&ftag=CAD-04-10aae9d&bhid=27130277026477784726591034511093
^This article gets it all wrong, this is why I love free speech on the internet because NO ONE deserves a bigger say than anyone else which is what free speech is all about. Unlike broadcast media everyone still ideally gets "a say" and it's up to the public to decide who they want to listen too, ideally a little bit of everyone to some degree.
This CNET article claims Telsa is now above $420 because of the CyberTruck and that the Gigafactory in China is almost ready to start, but you could watch almost daily quadcopter fly overs seeing how rapidly it was being built, so no surprises there.

Fact is Tesla is up because China gave Tesla a $1.4billion dollar loan so it doesn't have to risk diluting/creating new shares to issue to raise capital which was a worry some investors had, thus the money worries disappear and the stock shoots higher in price.
Tesla's stock hits record high following report of Chinese loan
https://www.dw.com/en/teslas-stock-hits-record-high-following-report-of-chinese-loan/a-51784668

And like I said in my post above its really about the AI.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/09/tesla-investor-catherine-wood-sees-worst-case-a-stock-double-by-2024.html
https://youtu.be/UwPkts0u0co?t=147
I think they’re ignoring a lot of realities” such as the company’s stronghold on artificial intelligence and the real world miles it’s collecting.

The thing that throws people off when it comes to AI/self-driving cars is most people expect it to be perfect for it to be allowed/introduced on the roads thus Tesla can't really make it happen, but the fact is Elon/Tesla have proven you can do it the opposite way and start off really sloppy, just like the early builds of the Model 3, they didn't really care if things weren't right with paint jobs and panel alignments they just made them anyway...

If Tesla is/can start self-driving to teach AI algorithms via its current auto-pilot product, then while that is sloppy, it gets better is only a matter of time when it should logically succeed in driving better than the average person.
It's just that Elon's process of achieving all this is extremely unconventional, and some claim illegal (some claim autopilot shouldn't be allowed on public roads).
This Elon method of getting there through entirely unconventional even sloppy(and arguably illegal) methods is what is throwing a lot of people off on what is actually being achieved, including me for a while.

 

[Dauntless]

So CNET left out something important, but the things they covered are still more important, the Chinese money wouldn't have happened without all that.

 

[Dauntless]

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/27/business/tesla-china-auto-industry/index.html

 

[TheBeastie]

So CNET left out something important, but the things they covered are still more important, the Chinese money wouldn't have happened without all that.

Yep
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/tesla-shoving-it-trumps-face-producing-cars-china-skirt-tariffs
^And as this article points out that its a bit ordinary to open up a China Tesla factory after Tesla took $5Billion from US taxpayers...

As for the whole argument about "Autopilot" related accidents that are all but ignored by the NHTSA, I think the NHTSA has decided that because Tesla's Autopilot technology is slowly "learning to drive" via the Autopilot user correcting the EV when it's about to have an accident, this makes me believe that the NHTSA has decided Autopilot is worth the risks because of the future benefits of the AI learning to drive eventually better than most humans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year
^Like the stats show about 37,000 people dying on USA roads each year is simply horrible, you can argue what about drug abuse etc but the fact is most people who die via car didn't in any way ask for it, they were just trying to do the right thing and died most of the time.
And while 37,000 dying is bad enough its also over 2million people who are injured... so if someone survives their car crash they could still be in a bad situation like in a wheelchair for the rest of their lives...

So to me, it's clear the NHTSA has looked at the cost/benefit analysis of Telsa's Autopilot feature and decided that if it really is using AI to slowly learn to drive better than most humans than its more helpful than a hindrance, on the roads, which I totally agree.

 

[Dauntless]

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/30/tech/tesla-sales-stock-price/index.html

Tesla is probably the ultimate example of how you can't really judge by the stock price.

 

[methods]

This thread does not seem to be picking up any momentum.

I have a man-crush on Elon Musk.
I actually believe that he is the most influential individual of our time. What makes it special, is that he appears, to be somewhat real and down to earth.

I dont know how he behaves behind the curtains, but I am a pretty good judge of genuine character, and short of being a very good actor. . . I am not sure he could fake it. So - I believe he displays his genuine character and not some facade like other leaders.

This is important to me because I am tired of the type of assholes that swing golf clubs, wear suits, and play by all the old rules. To me, these types, are fake thru and thru. All smiles and white teeth and happy wives and happy kids on tv... while in reality... they are frocked people with frocked lives - miserable.

In the internet age. . . we must be lead by genuine people... or we will be lead astray.

-methods

 

[marty]

In my little world. Buffalo NY. Been working as a Uber driver. Taking people to work lets me see where people are working. For Car manufactures we got 2 GM factories. Think one makes engines, and the other one makes radiators and AC condensers. Ford factory makes body parts. Now we got a Tesla factory. Like GM and Ford I ask the employees what they make? From what I can tell they make parts of parts and they not sure what the finished part is?

Look:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigafactory_2

The government paid to build this building. So yea I paid to build this building. Now I read somewhere the government is charging Tesla $1 a year to rent the building for 10 years. $1 a year? I could afford that.

Contractor who built the building is now in jail.
https://buffalonews.com/2018/12/03/louis-p-ciminelli-sentencing-buffalo-billion-riverbend/

I am not understanding? Why is the government building buildings for Tesla and Panasonic? Yes I understand so that people can have a job and I can get paid to take them to their jobs. Wouldn't it make more sense for someone to build solar panels in their garage and pay others to help them expand their business.

 

[cricketo]

Why is the government building buildings for Tesla and Panasonic? Yes I understand so that people can have a job and I can get paid to take them to their jobs. Wouldn't it make more sense for someone to build solar panels in their garage and pay others to help them expand their business.

Tesla's subsidies, if it meets its mandate to employ 1,460 people, amount to $657,000 per job in Buffalo. Tesla's commitment, however, is broader than just Buffalo. The company has agreed to spend $5 billion on capital and operating expenses and bring 5,000 jobs to the state during the 10-year period.

The state has invested into its own people through Tesla. If they could create jobs without spending money, they probably would.

 

[TheBeastie]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigafactory_2
The government paid to build this building. So yea I paid to build this building. Now I read somewhere the government is charging Tesla $1 a year to rent the building for 10 years. $1 a year? I could afford that.

I am not understanding? Why is the government building buildings for Tesla and Panasonic? Yes I understand so that people can have a job and I can get paid to take them to their jobs. Wouldn't it make more sense for someone to build solar panels in their garage and pay others to help them expand their business.

Yes, this is another example of Elon being a "clever businessman", when there is gov money floating out there he has eagle eyes to swoop in and snatch it before anyone else.

The Buffalo Solar factory is definitely one of Elon's more dirty business dealings... Vanityfair did an interesting/great article on this story.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/08/how-elon-musk-gambled-tesla-to-save-solarcity
“HE’S FULL OF SHIT”: HOW ELON MUSK FOOLED INVESTORS, BILKED TAXPAYERS, AND GAMBLED TESLA TO SAVE SOLARCITY
The controversy over SolarCity, which has dovetailed with questions about Musk’s mountain of debt and profit shortfalls, offers a window into the mindset of America’s most outlandish CEO.

Another decent article on the subject...
https://nypost.com/2019/08/28/cuomos-buffalo-billion-tainted-tesla-solar-city-faces-audit/

On a similar subject, I do like to go through some of Elon's biggest critics Tweeter feeds to see what they have dug up, some of it can be very lame childish and pathetic, but other times its remarkably interesting/good stuff.
Apparently this Chinese company is going to be making the core part of the "real Tesla solar tile"
https://twitter.com/markbspiegel/status/1213890474932686849?s=20
A company called "Changzhou Almaden" today announced a contract to provide $TSLA with solar photovoltaic glass. Here's the company: http://en.czamd.com

IF IT'S PROVIDING PHOTOELECTRIC GLASS FOR TESLA SOLAR TILES, WHAT EXACTLY DOES TESLA HAVE THAT'S MEANINGFULLY PROPRIETARY?

^So you can ask your self what was the whole Buffalo plant for if its going to be made in China? Is it that Elon just wanted the tax money and excuse to buy out his own debts of SolarCity via the remarkably high Tesla share price?

Oh well, whatever works I suppose :|

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On another Elon subject, Elon has been accused of snaking other peoples technology/ideas... For example, Tesla was NOT started by Elon Musk, but I have seen some incredibly convincing documentaries/speeches by Elon suggesting he did... But officially he was an early funder, as the official Wikipedia page says...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.
Tesla was founded in July 2003, by engineers Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, under the name Tesla Motors. The company's name is a tribute to engineer Nikola Tesla. In early Series A funding, Tesla Motors was joined by Elon Musk, J. B. Straubel and Ian Wright, all of whom are retroactively allowed to call themselves co-founders of the company.

Another example of snaking tech ideas...
Intel's Mobileye demos autonomous car equipped only with cameras, no other sensors
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tech-ces-intel-idUSKBN1Z6091?taid=5e14048148fe97000144b82f&utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter
Intel Corp on Monday released a video of its Mobileye autonomous car navigating the streets of Jerusalem for about 20 minutes with the help of 12 on-board cameras and, unusually, no other sensors.
The development comes as chipmakers and machine-vision system manufacturers compete to provide the brains and eyes of automated vehicles.

Elon used MobileEye for its auto-pilot tech and then dumped them after a nasty car crash.
In August 2015, Tesla Motors announced that it is using Mobileye's technology to enable its self-drive solution, which would be incorporated into Model S cars from August 2015.[8] After the first deadly crash of a self-driving Model S with active Autopilot became public in June 2016, Mobileye issued a statement that its technology won't be able to recognize a crossing trailer (which was the cause of the accident) until 2018.[9] In July 2016, Mobileye announced the end of its partnership with Tesla after the EyeQ3.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobileye#History

But then Intel bought out/took over Mobileye in 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobileye#Company_timeline
2017: Acquired by Intel for $15.3B[34]


Tech giants like Intel/Google have a good skill of absorbing smaller companies and getting some really good "technology-juice" out of them, the Reuters article I listed above includes this link to a new 1 day old YouTube video for CES 2020 showing off the latest Mobileye autonomous driving system using Intel customised processors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kNUVM8s0nc&feature=youtu.be
*Edit* ^Whooop.... The video has gone... that's a shame it was pretty impressive... Maybe Mobileye doesn't really want people to see what they are capable of.

Update 2, here is another version.. uploaded 12 hours ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCWL0XF_f8Y
[youtube]hCWL0XF_f8Y[/youtube]

If you want to watch an 1 hour long CES 2020 Mobileye presentation this was just uploaded
CES 2020: An Hour with Amnon - Autonomous Vehicles Powered by Mobileye
https://youtu.be/HPWGFzqd7pI

I am sharing this because Autonomous driving technology is basically core to Tesla's/Elon's market value at the moment, IMO.

*ADD* I didn't notice this on this chart until today, but Google's Waymo is also on this company valuation in billions chart, it shows Waymo is considered more valuable than any car maker at $105billion, so it just shows you how much value gets slapped on something if it can prove that its self-driving technology is the best/gaining momentum.

 

[TheBeastie]

So its all been mostly good news for our master Elon Musk lately.

His Starlink 2 mission launch was successful putting another 60sats in the orbit for a total of 180 apparently.
I still wonder how much internet speed it will give per user, no public information, either for competitive edge or because its not that amazing? I think a lot of average users would be happy with 20mbits/sec, if you can get more than that no matter how many people are using it at the same time, then it should be quite successful, I would guess.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/with-monday-night-launch-spacex-to-become-worlds-largest-satellite-operator/

[youtube]HwyXo6T7jC4[/youtube]

The stock price of Tesla has been rocketing higher and it appears Elon is so happy he is publically dancing https://youtu.be/d85EriQfzX8?t=26

I have been spying on the "professional Elon haters" on social media and they claim all the good news lately is misleading baloney and a nasty "financial reality end" is closer than ever for Elon.

 

[methods]

All business is "dirty business"

The only thing I can tell those who spend significant time compiling information from public sources is. . . you are seeing only what they want you to see and that is just the tip of the ice berg.

It is a rigged game thru and thru. . . and we are just getting to see blips of EV navigating this well pounded path.

Those already entrenched: Big Auto, Big Oil, Big Politics, Big youNameIt -
10X to 100X nastier than any dirt you will ever find on Elon. They are just more secretive, more connected, more sophisticated, and more focused on spinning the facts.

Elon has a mission. The mission is in the interest of the people. If you cant see that then I am pretty sure you are just a hater, and haters are welcome.

I am in full support of Elon and the companies surrounding him.
PayPal
Tesla
SpaceX
... companies that create tunnels... companies that harness solar....

If anyone wants to bag on those initiatives, I suggest they do it in front of the background of what we currently have...

- A war machine
- Cars that spew poison everywhere
- A society that values liars above all others

So Perspective
Keep the hating in perspective and the "ugly business" which is unavoidable becomes at least understandable.

... If this revolution could happen in garages, it would.

-methods

 

[billvon]

I still wonder how much internet speed it will give per user, no public information, either for competitive edge or because its not that amazing? I think a lot of average users would be happy with 20mbits/sec, if you can get more than that no matter how many people are using it at the same time, then it should be quite successful, I would guess.

Far less than that for most people I would guess, based purely on bandwidth, link budgets and power constraints.

But the value of this isn't to get a guy in Denver 40mb/s. It's to get someone in Kashgar, China 1mb/s - someone who has never had any Internet before, period. Or to get that same 1mb/s to someone in Hanzhong that same 1mb/s without going through the government's filters.

 

[TheBeastie]

I still wonder how much internet speed it will give per user, no public information, either for competitive edge or because its not that amazing? I think a lot of average users would be happy with 20mbits/sec, if you can get more than that no matter how many people are using it at the same time, then it should be quite successful, I would guess.

Far less than that for most people I would guess, based purely on bandwidth, link budgets and power constraints.

But the value of this isn't to get a guy in Denver 40mb/s. It's to get someone in Kashgar, China 1mb/s - someone who has never had any Internet before, period. Or to get that same 1mb/s to someone in Hanzhong that same 1mb/s without going through the government's filters.

Because you live in internet options rich USA you probably would be completely oblivious to internet latency problems, but these are serious problems for a lot of people in Australia.
For example, EA for a lot of their games don't allow just anyone to host a server like their famous BattleField 4 game to run on anything other than an officially licenced game server provider.
https://help.ea.com/it-it/help/battlefield/battlefield-4/battlefield-4-server-rental-info_msm_moved/
https://www.gameservers.com/why/

This pushes up costs so there are only a few BattleField 4 game servers in Australia. The problem is A LOT of people from Japan/China/East Asia jump on the local Sydney hosted BF servers, but they all have pings of about 140ms, while everyone in Australia is about 40ms(on a broad average). So a lot of gamers complain that the 140ms players are slowing down the game causing lag, so there is a lot of arguing and kicking/banning of players to try and remove high latency players but they always find their way back on.

The problem is the "Speed of Light/Electromagnetic Radiation" isn't really fast enough for fast FPS gaming across the whole long-distance asia area.
One of the main problems is that speed of light is about 300,000km/sec "in a vacuum", but in glass (fibre optics) it travels only about 200,000km/sec, so the speed of light loses about 1/3rd of its speed in undersea cables.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light
The ratio between c and the speed v at which light travels in a material is called the refractive index n of the material (n = c / v). For example, for visible light the refractive index of glass is typically around 1.5, meaning that light in glass travels at c / 1.5 ≈ 200000 km/s (124000 mi/s); the refractive index of air for visible light is about 1.0003, so the speed of light in air is about 299700 km/s (186220 mi/s), which is about 90 km/s (56 mi/s) slower than c.
So radio waves/electromagnetic radiation/light only slows down about 90km/sec when travelling through the air, vs 100,000km/sec of slowdown travelling through glass.
More details on the speed at which light can travel through different materials here...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refractive_index#Typical_values https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_refractive_indices

This different "speed of light" issue has made the expectation and claims by Starlink that their service will give lower latency internet service for long-distance users (example: people who want to use game servers in Sydney from Japan)
So I am hoping that once Starlink is up and available in Asia that it will cut the latency times of people in East Asia from around 140ms to something just under 100ms, and then gamers will stop complaining about "laggers" ruining the gaming experience.

This could also solve the problem for outback Australian internet users who are forced to use Australia's NBN "Sky Muster" satellites for internet, these are geosynchronous satellites that sit about 35,000km above the earth which is pretty far away.
http://spaceflight101.com/ariane-5-va231/sky-muster-ii/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosynchronous_satellite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_orbit

So a round trip to the sat and back to earth is about 72,000km apparently,
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+much+time+for+light+to+travel+72000+kilometers

• Light travel time t in vacuum from t = x/c:
  | 240 ms (milliseconds)

• Light travel time t in an optical fiber t = 1.48x/c:
  | 355 ms (milliseconds)

I have actually seen people play FPS games on satellite in Australia, they have a ping of about 600ms, so they are useless at effective gaming.
Starlink's sats are going to sit in Low Earth Orbit at about 340km above the earth, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_(satellite_constellation)#Satellite_hardware
This massively closer than the 35,000km typical internet satellites use (like SkyMuster).
So there is plenty of argument that Elon's Starlink is premium global internet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Earth_orbit#Orbital_characteristics
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Orbitalaltitudes.jpg

^Typical geo-stats, like NBN's SkyMuster sit right out there in the red colored part "HEO"

Conversely, the Starlink round trip of 700km is 2.3ms, that is light travelling in a "vacuum" which is officially 299,792km/sec, but speed of light in air is about 299,700 km/sec, which is about 90km/sec less, a difference so tiny its barely worth including in the calculation for best-case latency performance. But compared to light travelling in glass/optic fibre the gains are noticeable.

I think Starlink will still aim for customers with the most money, I would say, it could be they will offer a slow 5mbits/sec to people in Africa/India, but for those countries with more money could be they offering something closer to +100mbits. The business model could technically allow for a lot of flexibility, maybe it's going to be $1 per Mbit, so people can buy the particular speed they can afford.
The important thing to remember is Elon tends to think really big and outside the box, most engineers would have turned their nose up at making 100kw/h battery packs for cars and decided that's just too big and over the top, but Elon didn't!
So it's possible we are way off here, and Elon is really aiming to provide 1000mbits/sec to anyone whos willing to pay $50/month or something of that ballpark. :?

 

[billvon]

Because you live in internet options rich USA you probably would be completely oblivious to internet latency problems, but these are serious problems for a lot of people in Australia.
For example, EA for a lot of their games don't allow just anyone to host a server like their famous BattleField 4 game to run on anything other than an officially licenced game server provider.

Quite familiar with latency.

Any place with access to wired landlines or wireless service will have much better options than Starlink. 5G, for example, has prioritized latency, and 5G systems will see average latencies under 10ms. And while the real speed advantages won't be available to most people living outside cities, the latency advantages will be. (Note that since Starlink starts out with an additional 5ms roundtrip latency, it has a handicap to begin with.)

The big advantages are going to come about in areas where thousands to millions of people have no or limited internet access. That's not going to be the US (or even Australia.) That's going to be in China, India, Pakistan etc.

Musk thinks big, and he thinks outside the box. Thus a plan to rapidly bootstrap areas like this into the 21st century, thanks to high speed low latency internet, is just his sort of thing. He gets new markets that no one else can touch - because they didn't realize they existed.

 

[cricketo]

Or to get that same 1mb/s to someone in Hanzhong that same 1mb/s without going through the government's filters.

Which isn't happening. Tesla got a preferential treatment in China so nobody is bypassing filters via Starlink.

 

[cricketo]

5G systems will see average latencies under 10ms.

LOL! May I ask by what means ? Even if hypothetically 5G reduces latency between the cell and the client, how would the latency magically get reduced all the way past operator's network, through the interconnect(s), and to the target infrastructure ?

 

[billvon]

LOL! May I ask by what means ?

1mS slots, transport blocks as short at 31.25uS, random resource allocations instead of scheduled/configured grant resources, things like that.

Even if hypothetically 5G reduces latency between the cell and the client, how would the latency magically get reduced all the way past operator's network, through the interconnect(s), and to the target infrastructure ?

?? It doesn't. We were talking about the differences in latency between terrestrial systems, LEO systems and GEO systems. All those differ by the latency from the subscriber to the head end or ground station. After that, you might see slow total latencies due to a lousy distant server, or great latencies due to fast, closely located edge computing resources.

 

[cricketo]

1mS slots, transport blocks as short at 31.25uS, random resource allocations instead of scheduled/configured grant resources, things like that.

Should be fine with low number of subscribers. Random distribution tends to have issues when the channel approaches saturation. That's just one part of the problem. The other part is the fact this is still a very noisy environment requiring fair number of retransmits. Starlink may have to deal with a lot less noise in some cases.

?? It doesn't. We were talking about the differences in latency between terrestrial systems, LEO systems and GEO systems. All those differ by the latency from the subscriber to the head end or ground station. After that, you might see slow total latencies due to a lousy distant server, or great latencies due to fast, closely located edge computing resources.

Fair on the first part. On the second part though you got to remember that SpaceX intends to route traffic through the constellation instead of bouncing it back to the surface at first opportunity. Implementation details of course will dictate whether it will result in reduced latency, or if the throughput of the interlinks will even allow doing it for most of the traffic, but possibility still exists. Having to pass through fewer intermediate nodes will reduce latency. Chances are none of the services I use are in the same town

 

[billvon]

Should be fine with low number of subscribers. Random distribution tends to have issues when the channel approaches saturation. That's just one part of the problem. The other part is the fact this is still a very noisy environment requiring fair number of retransmits. Starlink may have to deal with a lot less noise in some cases.

Depends where you are, right? In urban environments - definitely. (But urban environments also have the benefit of the huge capacity of mm-wave.) But in rural/suburban environments, where jammers are fewer, Eb/No will be higher, and retransmits will be fewer. (Which is also where Starlink shines, of course.)

 

[cricketo]

Depends where you are, right? In urban environments - definitely. (But urban environments also have the benefit of the huge capacity of mm-wave.) But in rural/suburban environments, where jammers are fewer, Eb/No will be higher, and retransmits will be fewer. (Which is also where Starlink shines, of course.)

Rural is indeed typically a low rf noise environment, but 5G is irrelevant there. 26+ Ghz just doesn't have the propagation characteristics practical for rural and tower density is quite low. Implementing 5G on current 3G and 4G bands (2.1Ghz and below) won't yield any significant benefits. I am frequent to a location just 40 miles from Portland in the coastal range, not a single provider reaches there. Still waiting for the T-Mobile's 600Mhz roll out to test - Verizon's 700Mhz doesn't make it through despite tower being less than 5 miles away.

Now when it comes to urban comms, what I was alluding to is antenna polarization. Terrestrial wireless, especially user equipment with omni antennas is just picking up all the noise. Same issue with the sector antennas used on the base stations. Starlink user terminals may be picking up a bunch of noise when tracking satellites low above the horizon, but above certain elevation the noise should drop dramatically, unless of course the terminal is super close to the source.