I work remotely and use a starlink mini for work and general internet usage since I road trip in the summer a lot. For work I'm not using doing RDP/remote desktop stuff since I have a company-issued laptop, but I have some experience using it to stream graphics-intensive games from my home PC with a nice GPU to my phone with a mobile controller attached to it.
I saw around 50-100ms of latency in ideal conditions with a clear view of the sky. There are distinct large latency spikes every 30ish minutes, which I think is due to the dish switching between different satellites.
I think the latency would be fine for working, but it will hardly be transparent. When using it to play games, I've mostly stuck to stuff that doesn't require fast responses or parry mechanics, etc.
Even without RDP-ing into another workstation, the latency spikes on video calls can be noticeable. Moment-to-moment video conferencing latency is totally fine, given that most of the major players in the space have pretty good latency compensation baked in.
A few details/complications:
- I'm usually within ~500 miles of my home, which is relevant because starlink satellites communicate with ground stations, and being closer to home will still have a meaningful impact on latency
- host PC is on a wired fiber connection
- I live relatively far north (~65N) and starlink's network isn't biased toward polar orbiting satellites, so my coverage probaby isn't representative of behavior further south. You can see a map of satellites and note the relatively poor arctic and subarctic region coverage here: https://satellitemap.space/
>There are distinct large latency spikes every 30ish minutes, which I think is due to the dish switching between different satellites.
The satellites are in Low Earth Orbit and zipping across the sky at an extremely high rate of speed. If you were in the middle of absolutely flat nowhere-land, you could maybe get a few minutes on a single satellite before it goes over the horizon, not 30 minutes.
Agree that it's only a few mins per satellite, but interestingly I've noticed this pause every now and then (and 30mins seems around what I've noticed) in New Zealand. The latency just spikes and sometimes connections are lost for a brief period then suddenly everything comes right again. Curious why that happens. However it's one reason why I still recommend fibre or 5G if it is availiable as both seem to be more reliable than Starlink.
If you have distinct spikes, you might have an obstruction. You need a much larger view of the sky to the north to completely get rid of that. If the connection is perfect, you should get consistent 20ms pings all day long. But it is really difficult to do, especially when traveling and you don't have control of where you can actually put the dish.
20ms pings, and I'm on the original gen 1 dish from the beta days still. Can't really tell much difference from a land-based connection. The mini is even faster when it has an equivalent view of the sky.
When I first watched a bunch of Adam Curtis stuff I thought it a long winded way of stating bad things have happened and have resulted in these bigger, overarching, bad things.
Thinking about it now 10 years later it feels alot different. The pervasiveness of tolerance of lies and fakeness has gone so far past anything I could have imagined being a big contributor to that.
For me, the key lies in the "We know they lie. They know we know they lie.". I'd argue that the transparency of lies is a fairly immature theme, relative to the long arc of history. Probably post-Iraq WMD is where I think it really started to ramp up and the emergence of virality/segmentation aspect of social media has really revved it up.
I would view that kind of lying as show of force: "Everybody knows it, but nobody can do anything about it, we are above even these rules."
Worse still is when it's an "affirm the falsehood to show you have been dominated by our threat of punishment" scenario:
> 'The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men.' He paused, and for a moment assumed again his air of a schoolmaster questioning a promising pupil: 'How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?'
> Winston thought. 'By making him suffer,' he said.
> 'Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.'
Curtis tried to make these statements on the downside of neoliberalism + postmodernism but I don't think he did a very good job based on the discussion on these films.
I think his work is just too stylized. He has such an interesting style that it overwhelms the message. I barely remember what his messaging is in films. Just the interesting visuals and ominous music.
If you read Undoing the Demos by Wendy Brown and Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition together you will understand exactly what he is going for. As a film it doesn't really work that well though beyond a kind of depressing entertainment. The themes are too subtle and philosophical along with most people don't have the background knowledge to really make sense of his points.
Reading the headline all I can think about is that many people with autism are not capable of communicating, or if they are, only in a limited way. Literally people who do not have a voice to speak for themselves.
And if it didn't work out and made you worse or, god forbid, the advice caused you to get seriously injured, then what? ChatGPT won't take any responsibility.
I have so many issues with our current health system but an alternative is not an unreliable search tool that takes no responsibility for the information it provides.
> And if it didn't work out and made you worse or, god forbid, the advice caused you to get seriously injured, then what? ChatGPT won't take any responsibility.
Realistically in 99% of actual cases where this happens due to human medical advice, the humans too won't take any responsibility.
A doctor is medically and legally responsible for the guidance they give patients. Are there cases where they give bad advice and avoid taking responsibility? Of course, as is the case with lawyers, engineers, etc., but there are standards they must meet, laws they must follow, and most importantly, consequences for not doing so.
This has zero responsibility, not some theoretical, "it may try to shirk responsibility" or "many people report it not taking responsibility", it by default takes no responsibility.
I care about the real world, not about theory. In theory, 99% of bad advice by doctors doesn't have any consequences for them. And that's being extremely conservative, in reality it's more like 0.01%, where an actual death can be directly attributed.
You always have to use critical thinking, listen to your body, and get advice from trainers in the trenches. As I mentioned, I did all of those things :)
on a similar vein, I have recurring back issues due to a spinal issue. I gave the issue to ChatGpT and it gave me almost all of the exercise I had been given years ago by a chiropractor. It's nowhere near a replacement for having someone coach me through movements though.
I think if you went in a Framework direction (opensource, high quality hardware, techie oriented, etc.) you would be able to make it work for a small high end market, particularly if you aimed it having a great "pc-connected" experience.
"Real estate investors, both individual and institutional, bought one-third of all single-family residential properties sold in the second quarter of 2025"
As long as we have this focus on using homes as investment and rent prices are kept high through collusion, the industry refusing to build "non-luxury" units, and regulation hurdles stopping new entrants, we will be stuck with this problem.
> the industry refusing to build "non-luxury" units
This is a government policy failure. Because no one is allowed to build fast enough, there is always a demand for luxury (higher profit) and thus that is what gets built.
You have to completely satiate the demand for luxury housing before it becomes "desirable" to build new standard housing. In years past the "starter home" market has completely been reselling past housing, even what was lux at the time of building.
Why would you spend your time and effort building a house that earns you $50k when for the same time and effort you could build a house that earns you $150k?
You'd only do the first if the second wasn't available.
> Why would you spend your time and effort building a house that earns you $50k when for the same time and effort you could build a house that earns you $150k?
Luxury housing is exempt from rent-control laws in places where those exist.
I mostly only use spotify for discovery, using either discovery weekly or starting a radio stream from a particular song. Is there another service that treats artists better that I can use instead for this purpose?
If you don't mind self-hosting, I've recently started using ListenBrainz in combination with Navidrome. You can upload your Spotify listen history to seed it, and scrobble your ongoing listening to keep it up to date with what you listen to. You can use a plugin[1] to automatically generate daily, weekly, and discovery playlists based on your listen history, and what you have available in your library. You can generate even more playlists using ListenBrainz data via their tool, Troi[2].
I swear boom spends more on puff pieces than any other aerospace company. They continuously make claims they will do things by certain dates that are unrealistic.
They claim they will be delivering airplanes to United that would be in service in 2029:
However new aircraft take 5-9 years to certify and they have not yet even built one! Not to mention new engines take a similar amount of time and they are supposedly building their own brand new engine, which is a substantially harder task.
Now they are claiming the first "test" flight will be in 3 years despite the fact that they still don't have a plane or an engine built. I hope someone over their let United know they are going to be a little late. Their website hasn't amended to article to say they were wrong.
I wonder if we can look to history to see how long it takes between when they say they will fly something and when it actually flies? Oh right, we can!
"The original design was unveiled at Centennial Airport in Dove Valley, near Denver, Colorado, on November 15, 2016,[6] and it was initially intended to make its first subsonic flight in late 2017"
"The XB-1 performed its first flight test on March 22, 2024, flown by test pilot Bill Shoemaker from Mojave Air and Space Port.[1]"
They were only 7 years off but we all make mistakes.
Astro Mechanica
- LNG isn't used because weight needed for fuel tanks that will keep it cold enough to stay liquid cancels out any benefits. For anyone interested in a famous failure of a similar idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_CL-400_Suntan
- I don't know what analysis they are doing that makes them think reducing the number of passengers and going to supersonic is possible while maintaining current ticket prices... but it's not.
- Engine and plane makers are not allowed to run airlines. Anyone unfamiliar with the field can look up United Aircraft.
- Their engine does sound like it's trying to do some cool things. I kinda suspect it's just a fun way to pass the time on the governments dime given all the other unrealistic stuff they are talking about though.
Hermeus
These folks are legit. Don't know if they will be successful but outsourcing the jet engine and focusing their work on the ramjet and the integration of the two makes alot of sense.
I was a bit disappointed with the Boom XB-1. They originally announced - designed to maintain a speed of Mach 2.2, with over 1,000 nautical miles. I thought cool. Then 7 years late they fly and - Mach 1.1 and no long–range. Then rather than develop it they say it's retired, we'll take orders for Overture now.
"Here's the thing most people miss: promotions don't fall off the tree and land in your lap. You've got to show that you're capable of handling the responsibility for a sustained period of time."
Some classic management gaslighting. You have to work for a few years at the level of the higher position to get it. I will trust your work at this level, profit off of it, hold you responsible for it but not pay you appropriately for it. It's always the compensation piece that takes time.
Not really related to what I said but I'll bite. Let me try phrasing it in a different way, if someone asked you to, in addition to doing your own job, do someone elses, but instead of paying you for that additional work said you'd get great "exposure" and a future reward, would you jump at that chance?
I know many people that have because they care, they are hungry, they want to advance, they can do higher level things and want to prove themselves, etc. and the vast majority of them have gotten nothing for their trouble but extra work. We live in a world where working hard is always encouraged and its virtues extolled but rarely rewarded.
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