[alephnerd]

> Starlink makes "internet shutdown" impotent

It still requires a radio transmitter. If push comes to shove, a government can still track RF leakage or worst case GPS jamming (if it's really that existential).

Iran did the same thing when cracking down on Satelite TV and SatPhones during the crackdown of the Green Revolution (anti-Ahmedinijad protests in 2009) and anecdotally, Starlink terminals have been increasingly unstable in Iran.

I also vaguely remember a DIUx RFS within the past year for startups working on minimizing RF leakage from terminals.

[bilbo0s]

A lot of these people talk about Starlink like they never heard of RF engineering.

It's like, "Um, guy, Starlink can be shut down too."

[alephnerd]

> A lot of these people talk about Starlink like they never heard of RF engineering.

Because they most likely didn't. On a separate tangent, I HATE how most CS majors can get a CS degree without even learning basics about electronics engineering or even computer architecture.

It's a shame because a lot of the craft used in DSP and RF Engineering has direct applications in ML (much of ML is itself a fork of Information Theory which started off as a DSP subfield)

[protocolture]

Starlink just transmits to a ground station thats 99% of the time in the same country. Its not some magical space internet, its just regular internet bottled and delivered by satellite.

RF is really where this discussion needs to be, you and your mate jim can set up a bunch of UBNT hardware and create your own intranet really god damn easily. No reliance on some guy who signed on to all your governments internet censorship laws.

[HPsquared]

Starlink also uses optical inter-satellite links. Ground stations aren't necessarily required to be near to the customer.