[Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian army?

[Bruce Perens]

On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 5:31 PM Dave Taht <dave.taht at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 1:45 AM Bruce Perens via Starlink
> I have rather hated the return  of over-processed communications in
> the last decade, and the lack of a place to yell back at the screen. I
> liked blogs and websites and media that had comments, and better, had
> authors that read the comments.
>

I do notice that a lot of retail companies have PR mechanisms that note
their detractors, and they reach out and try to solve problems. I have had
some offer retroactive discounts after I noted issues online.

I like a wacking good, long form, debate... which is why I miss netnews and
> email so much.
>

I don't think it's the medium so much as the demographic. Many of us here
thought for decades that we would enhance freedom and democracy through the
internet. It didn't work out the way we expected. Our view was biased by
the fact that the early internet demographic was technical folks who valued
logic and argument to consensus. The later internet doesn't have that same
demographic.

And you can be sure that I did not mean for Open Source to be mainly
something that large businesses would participate in for their own benefit.
There are a lot of folks who re-stated the goals of Open Source after the
fact. I was just trying to reach people who would not have been sympathetic
to RMS's presentation. I care a lot more for the people than for companies
that could not possibly need my help.

I don't see "far-right" conspiracy theorism except from commenters.
> Got a concrete example?
>

Oh sure. Here's one example:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1532899718401073152/photo/1
There are quite a lot more and I can go collect them if I have to. I just
took a few minutes to dig back that far. Elon also has, I think, 9 children
by about 5 different women, and he has written many, many posts about how
we need to make more babies to support industry or society will collapse.
Which disregards the fact that nothing that the vast majority of us do in
our entire lives will have so great a negative effect upon the environment
as having a child.

I am hopefully well known as a pretty rigorously "fair" person.[1]


I get the article, but this is something that people aspire to and never
reach. Stop saying that about yourself and just quietly try to achieve it,
people will think better of you that way.

Elon has definitely shifted right in the past years moving from california
> to texas,


IMO this is effect rather than cause. As far as I can tell he lost the
governor on his mouth during his relationship with Grimes, not sure whether
that was cause or not.


> - in order to sell "green technology" into the other half of the country,
> he needs to talk to things that those folk care about.
>

I don't think it works that way, unfortunately. There are essentially two
camps, one of which believes that god gave us the world to use up before
the rapture (or their own religion's version of that), and the other does
not base their entire world-view on scripture. The Jesuit cliche is true:
"give me a child before the age of 7 and I have them for life". It is very
difficult for most people to reverse that early learning whatever logical
argument they are faced with.


> the effects of population collapse can be demonstrated in aging
> populations in Japan, especially, who have also made a big investment into
> robotization.
>

The main change is that women aren't slaves to the family for their whole
lives any longer, but have careers and education. Japan's population only
reached its peak in 2008. So it can't be because of that. We have two big
changes: Women aren't slaves to the family for their whole lives any
longer, but have careers and education. And people live to be older, and
the Japanese live to be older than most populations, probably because of
better diet - lots more fish than most Americans, etc. You can look up the
lifespan graph, it's increasing by 0.14/year.


> It is impossible to be endearing to all people.
>

Actually, most corporate officers do not broadcast their opinion on every
topic under the sun, and thus avoid this issue for their companies.

A really good question might be - what would steve jobs' have done, in this
> situation? Think different?
>

Steve quietly supported liberal and democratic causes with his money, but
was not the public speaker for these causes because that would have been
bad for Apple and Pixar (and NeXT, back then).

Others are better qualified to speak about Gandhi, Pol Pot, and Winston
Churchill.


> and if someone could tell ME what my politics are after reading that


Well, we tend to conflate our politics into one thing when it should be a
long list of different things starting with economics. You will understand
yourself much better by trying to separate all of the pieces.

Before you blame inflation on our own folks, note that the UK Pound was a
literal pound weight of silver at one time. It's a hard problem and few
nations have avoided it.

    Bruce
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