Tinybox is cool but I think the market is maybe looking more for a turn-key explicit promise of some level of intelligence @ a certain Tok/s like "Kimi 2.5 at 50Tok/s".
Starlink recently implemented new rules for satellites that travel more than 100mph. Service is deactivated unless they have a valid government ID and an aircraft's tail number attached to the account. While both can be faked, you could arguably correlated a provided tail number with ADS-B data because anyone with a Starlink is likely also broadcasting ADS-B. But it also provides a bit of 1:1 correlation on satellites and there is a finite number of tail numbers out there.
They also jacked up the subscription price which caused thousands of actual pilots to cancel their service. So expect a flood of used Starlink Minis to enter the market soon.
I thought Starlink doesn't allow you to move your terminal at all with the basic plan, and there's a premium plan where you can move it, but still can't use it, unless you stop?
You aren’t supposed to move the terminal on a residential plan, but there are plans for RVs, boats and planes that allow you to change location and/or use while in motion.
I had the RV plan when they said it would not work in motion, but it worked pretty well on the highway anyway.
Terminals in Ukraine are whitelisted (with whitelist being supplied by the Ukrainian MoD). Meaningful controls are possible, it's what led to the ukrainian forces advancing and liberating territory recently.
You missed my point. It's impossible to meaningfully control the export of physical terminals. But as I pointed out above, SpaceX has already been doing some geo-locking.
I did not. Whitelisting means Russia can not buy terminals in UAE and use them in Ukraine. Because the terminals in UAE are not whitelisted to be used in Ukraine. Therefore, it's possible to control the export of terminals.
I suspect nradov argues that this type of geofencing + allow-listing is not typically what people mean when they talk about "export control", which I agree with.
And while geofencing + allow-listing for sure provide value in e.g the Ukrainian conflict, it's a weak protection compared to goods that are actually under strict export control (e.g ITAR), and will always have to be done after the fact. Russia could for example put Starlink on drones launched from the Baltic Ocean targeting Poland or whatever.
Sure. But if you geoblock all use on Russian controlled land, you're also blocking Ukrainian use on Russian controlled land. I have no idea if that would cause issues or not, but it's not that far fetched to imagine it might.
I know this is a meme but for those at home the whole point of a war is to cross over the front line into the opponent's territory and capture it. If your comms are disabled when you cross the front you can't really fight. So "just disable Starlink within Russian territory" does not solve anything.
You can have a hybrid approach - deny access in that area by default but have a secure way to whitelist specific terminals for short periods (mission duration)
The issue isn't Russians using Starlink inside Russia (they have other option, e.g. wired system, etc. there); the issue was their using it for drones and other combat operations inside Ukraine (including Ukrainian territory presently held by Russia).
It's beyond sickening what none of you even bother with the idea what a civilian service should not be used by the military, especially in the zone of the conflict - by any side.
SpaceX is a privately-owned defense services company. Their #1 client is the United States. Their launches out of Vandenberg occur because the United States Space Force allows them to happen.
Are you on their board? Who are you to make the call that the product they are offering is a "civilian" (only?) service?
It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation.
I think what's actually funnier is that the satellite shooting the laser has to know where the terminal is with pin point accuracy too. So it's pretty easy to cut off targeting to a vast chunk of the planet.
How would they geolock terminals on active conflict zone where conflict line changes in realtime. Terminals also cross miles across the line on drones etc. regularly. There was also pushback from Ukraine forces, when they are asked to register their terminals to be whitelisted a while back.
Nowadays Starlink terminals to operate in Ukraine they have to be approved so right now Russians cannot waste them anymore on drones as it's much harder getting one working (in the past they have been).
The theory is the US let some Russians use it as a trap to get them dependent on it and then pulled the rug which gave Ukraine a big advantage to clear some areas and generally disrupted Russian operations.
The DoD has always been deeply involved in running Starlink there
How does radio transmission with fast moving targets work (including LTE on phone), doesnt the doppler effect shift the frequencies of all radio waves?
Yup, it shifts but it's a minor shift and easily handled in the receiver. Receivers already need a little ability to tune the carrier frequency to account for ordinary variations in the circuits. From memory GPS's doppler shift is on the scale of a single digit khz, so Starlink's probably double that. A few khz of shift is no big deal for ghz carriers.
All RF protocols have some provision for signal acquisition. It can take a bunch of forms but what it nets out to is the oscillator in the receiver can acquire the signal from the sender. A simple example of this is "pilot" signals or prefixes that have an easily recognizable structure and allow the receiver to align to the sender in the clock recovery sense. So the receiver needs a little extra tunable bandwidth and to run the messy intermediates through something like a convolution filter, but it can latch on easily. This is early days of radio technology, like mid century post war.
Yes. Their brilliant 5D chess moves I can see at the gas station every day. Their long term plan is clearly to drive everyone away from the fossil industry and towards renewables.
That story keeps being spun by people who don’t read articles (or don’t expect people to). What SpaceX did there was limit the use of Starlink in Russian controlled territory. The very same new pattern of Ukraine whitelisting and geofencing access which is what everyone is praising today.
The only reason Ukraine complained was their special ops were running drone boats deep in Russian territory. After they asked for permission (following this controversy) SpaceX did a deal with DoD to let them manage those special cases allowing its use behind enemy lines.
Starlink has been nothing but positive for Ukraine
I do wish one of the big labs would sponsor with a rack of HGX Rubin NVL8's. I have lots of ideas to test, and I have probably hit the spending limit with the boss on hardware (she hasn't seen the new power bill yet...)
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