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

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

[Juliusz Chroboczek]

As some of you recall, Elon Musk recently posted a tweet in which he
recommends that Ukraine should capitulate to Russia.  Andrij Melnyk, the
Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany, replied in two words.

  https://twitter.com/melnykandrij/status/1576977000178208768
  
A few days later, Musk announced that Starlink would no longer pay its
fraction of the cost of deploying Starlink terminals with the Ukrainian
Army, and that the US government, if it so wishes, should foot the bill.

  https://twitter.com/officejjsmart/status/1580782290849759232

Perhaps unrelated, there are reports of Starlink outages in Ukraine.

  https://www.ft.com/content/9a7b922b-2435-4ac7-acdb-0ec9a6dc8397

-- Juliusz

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

[David Lang]

you need to provide the rest of the information, namely that Russia is actively 
jamming communications. Elon Musk said that so far it had not been very 
effective against Starlink, but had knocked out viasat.

Said jamming could easily account for any outages.

David Lang

On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Juliusz Chroboczek via Starlink wrote:

> Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2022 14:06:56 +0200
> From: Juliusz Chroboczek via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
> Reply-To: Juliusz Chroboczek <jch@irif.fr>
> To: starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> Subject: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian army?
> 
> As some of you recall, Elon Musk recently posted a tweet in which he
> recommends that Ukraine should capitulate to Russia.  Andrij Melnyk, the
> Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany, replied in two words.
>
>  https://twitter.com/melnykandrij/status/1576977000178208768
> 
> A few days later, Musk announced that Starlink would no longer pay its
> fraction of the cost of deploying Starlink terminals with the Ukrainian
> Army, and that the US government, if it so wishes, should foot the bill.
>
>  https://twitter.com/officejjsmart/status/1580782290849759232
>
> Perhaps unrelated, there are reports of Starlink outages in Ukraine.
>
>  https://www.ft.com/content/9a7b922b-2435-4ac7-acdb-0ec9a6dc8397
>
> -- Juliusz
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

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

[Mike Puchol]

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I would detach the outages from anything related to payments or claims by Elon. I put together a short thread on Twitter to explain the issues around providing service around the battle fronts:

https://twitter.com/mikepuchol/status/1578524400055648256

If anyone wants to dig into any particulars let me know.

If SpaceX suddenly turned off what in Ukraine is now an essential service and a military asset, based on some strong words thrown around, or questions around payments, it would be devastating for the credibility of Starlink as anything other than a consumer product.

My personal view is that SpaceX has the right to be fairly compensated for their contribution, just like the manufacturers of Javelins are not giving them away for free. What “fairly” means is where the conversation must happen. SpaceX was too generous early on and set expectations, and now seems to be moving to the other side of the spectrum in terms of their costs, with figures that seem, on the surface, unrealistic.

Best,

Mike
On Oct 14, 2022 at 14:07 +0200, Juliusz Chroboczek via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>, wrote:
> As some of you recall, Elon Musk recently posted a tweet in which he
> recommends that Ukraine should capitulate to Russia. Andrij Melnyk, the
> Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany, replied in two words.
>
> https://twitter.com/melnykandrij/status/1576977000178208768
>
> A few days later, Musk announced that Starlink would no longer pay its
> fraction of the cost of deploying Starlink terminals with the Ukrainian
> Army, and that the US government, if it so wishes, should foot the bill.
>
> https://twitter.com/officejjsmart/status/1580782290849759232
>
> Perhaps unrelated, there are reports of Starlink outages in Ukraine.
>
> https://www.ft.com/content/9a7b922b-2435-4ac7-acdb-0ec9a6dc8397
>
> -- Juliusz
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

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

[Juliusz Chroboczek]

> you need to provide the rest of the information, namely that Russia is
> actively jamming communications.

Interesting, I wasn't aware that they have the capability to do that in
areas that they do not control.  Do you have any further information?

-- Juliusz

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

[David Lang]

satellites are visible from a wide area, and if you are talking about jamming 
the Ukrainian Army, they are going to be close enough to affect ground stations 
as well.

On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Juliusz Chroboczek wrote:

>> you need to provide the rest of the information, namely that Russia is
>> actively jamming communications.
>
> Interesting, I wasn't aware that they have the capability to do that in
> areas that they do not control.  Do you have any further information?
>
> -- Juliusz
>

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

[Juliusz Chroboczek]

> SpaceX was too generous early on and set expectations, and now seems to
> be moving to the other side of the spectrum in terms of their costs,
> with figures that seem, on the surface, unrealistic.

Could you please explain this last point?

-- Juliusz

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

[Mike Puchol]

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We saw this in slums in Kenya. They are used to dozens of NGOs coming and going every year, usually lasting only as much as their donor/grant money. When we launched a commercial WiFi service, we had to make a huge effort to convince people they actually had to pay for the service, and that we were there to stay, not just another NGO offering free stuff.

In essence, once you give something away for free, not even setting the expectation that it’s a “freemium” model, it’s very hard to get out of it. If you then claim your costs are way higher than what analysis work out, eyebrows raise way above the hairline.

Best,

Mike
On Oct 14, 2022 at 15:13 +0200, Juliusz Chroboczek <jch@irif.fr>, wrote:
> > SpaceX was too generous early on and set expectations, and now seems to
> > be moving to the other side of the spectrum in terms of their costs,
> > with figures that seem, on the surface, unrealistic.
>
> Could you please explain this last point?
>
> -- Juliusz

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

[Mike Puchol]

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Juliusz, see the Twitter thread I linked to, it explains precisely the jamming scenarios they could be facing, and how they are possible.

Best,

Mike
On Oct 14, 2022 at 15:11 +0200, David Lang via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>, wrote:
> satellites are visible from a wide area, and if you are talking about jamming
> the Ukrainian Army, they are going to be close enough to affect ground stations
> as well.
>
> On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Juliusz Chroboczek wrote:
>
> > > you need to provide the rest of the information, namely that Russia is
> > > actively jamming communications.
> >
> > Interesting, I wasn't aware that they have the capability to do that in
> > areas that they do not control. Do you have any further information?
> >
> > -- Juliusz
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

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

[Juliusz Chroboczek]

> In essence, once you give something away for free, not even setting the
> expectation that it’s a “freemium” model, it’s very hard to get out of it. If
> you then claim your costs are way higher than what analysis work out, eyebrows
> raise way above the hairline.

Uh.  Hmm.

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

[Kurtis Heimerl]

This thread (https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456)
strongly argues that Starlink is largely paid for their service, at
least on the consumer side. I imagine there are significant
operational expenses in dealing with the various actors involved but
not on the basic model.

On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 9:06 AM Juliusz Chroboczek via Starlink
<starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
> > In essence, once you give something away for free, not even setting the
> > expectation that it’s a “freemium” model, it’s very hard to get out of it. If
> > you then claim your costs are way higher than what analysis work out, eyebrows
> > raise way above the hairline.
>
> Uh.  Hmm.
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

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

[David Lang]

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Having now read more info on this, less significant than the $80m total figure 
is the $20m/month figure he quoted. With 15k dishes as the figure that they sent 
(separate from whatever has been purchased on the commercial side), that works 
out to 1.3k/dish/month, which is very high.

now, not being able to deploy reliable ground stations inside Ukraine could be 
driving up costs, plus the ongoing battle against jamming. But in his tweet he 
also cites satellite costs, which should not be allocated as "Ukraine related" 
costs (and I don't think the cyberdefense and jamming defense work should be 
either)

David Lang

On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Kurtis Heimerl via Starlink wrote:

> This thread (https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456)
> strongly argues that Starlink is largely paid for their service, at
> least on the consumer side. I imagine there are significant
> operational expenses in dealing with the various actors involved but
> not on the basic model.
>
> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 9:06 AM Juliusz Chroboczek via Starlink
> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>
>> > In essence, once you give something away for free, not even setting the
>> > expectation that it’s a “freemium” model, it’s very hard to get out of it. If
>> > you then claim your costs are way higher than what analysis work out, eyebrows
>> > raise way above the hairline.
>>
>> Uh.  Hmm.
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

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

[Juliusz Chroboczek]

Thanks for the discussion, David, I'm sure I'm not the only one who found
it enlightening.

-- Juliusz

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

[Juliusz Chroboczek]

> Juliusz, see the Twitter thread I linked to, it explains precisely the
> jamming scenarios they could be facing, and how they are possible.

I saw it after I wrote my question, and it does explain a lot.  Thanks.

Do you have an idea how difficult it is to actually do in practice?  Is it
a simple matter of plugging a second-hand VSAT dish to an old amateur
radio rig, or do you actually need to be a research lab of the Moscow
Academy of Sciences to do it?

-- Juliusz

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

[Larry Press]

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SpaceX has given a more detailed statement of expenses to the Pentagon:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex-starlink-ukraine/index.html

They have been "paid" in favorable publicity and have tested/refined things like mobile connectivity.

Aren't the companies that supply weapons, ammunition, etc. paid?

Larry


________________________________
From: Starlink <starlink-bounces@lists.bufferbloat.net> on behalf of David Lang via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
Sent: Friday, October 14, 2022 10:28 AM
To: Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl@cs.washington.edu>
Cc: Starlink list <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian army?

Having now read more info on this, less significant than the $80m total figure
is the $20m/month figure he quoted. With 15k dishes as the figure that they sent
(separate from whatever has been purchased on the commercial side), that works
out to 1.3k/dish/month, which is very high.

now, not being able to deploy reliable ground stations inside Ukraine could be
driving up costs, plus the ongoing battle against jamming. But in his tweet he
also cites satellite costs, which should not be allocated as "Ukraine related"
costs (and I don't think the cyberdefense and jamming defense work should be
either)

David Lang

On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Kurtis Heimerl via Starlink wrote:

> This thread (https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456__;!!P7nkOOY!reUDfoQpkbJ6YAQ6h436UHdL9D0lnxDeqlc29JPUsrl8V_02dlWYYFi4zfQ-CCRLKetEGxza7FjOyJDcUURE6WtPnA$  )
> strongly argues that Starlink is largely paid for their service, at
> least on the consumer side. I imagine there are significant
> operational expenses in dealing with the various actors involved but
> not on the basic model.
>
> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 9:06 AM Juliusz Chroboczek via Starlink
> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>
>> > In essence, once you give something away for free, not even setting the
>> > expectation that it’s a “freemium” model, it’s very hard to get out of it. If
>> > you then claim your costs are way higher than what analysis work out, eyebrows
>> > raise way above the hairline.
>>
>> Uh.  Hmm.
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink__;!!P7nkOOY!reUDfoQpkbJ6YAQ6h436UHdL9D0lnxDeqlc29JPUsrl8V_02dlWYYFi4zfQ-CCRLKetEGxza7FjOyJDcUUSVCxIH-w$
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink__;!!P7nkOOY!reUDfoQpkbJ6YAQ6h436UHdL9D0lnxDeqlc29JPUsrl8V_02dlWYYFi4zfQ-CCRLKetEGxza7FjOyJDcUUSVCxIH-w$

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

[tom]

Putting aside the timing of Elon's complaint about cost right after the spat over his Ukrainian "peace plan", It is certainly reasonable for Starlink to get paid like other weapon suppliers who didn't give out free samples to prove their usefulness, Given that they should be reimbursed based on loaded cost plus profit like anyone else. I'm sure the other suppliers allocate their overhead costs when pricing weapon systems. They'd be out of business otherwise. The satellites are part of Starlink's fixed overhead so a portion of their costs should be allocated to service provided in Ukraine.

All that being said, it would be terrible if Ukraine got less than the best support that can be provided.

-----Original Message-----
From: Starlink <starlink-bounces@lists.bufferbloat.net> On Behalf Of David Lang via Starlink
Sent: Friday, October 14, 2022 1:28 PM
To: Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl@cs.washington.edu>
Cc: Starlink list <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian army?

Having now read more info on this, less significant than the $80m total figure is the $20m/month figure he quoted. With 15k dishes as the figure that they sent (separate from whatever has been purchased on the commercial side), that works out to 1.3k/dish/month, which is very high.

now, not being able to deploy reliable ground stations inside Ukraine could be driving up costs, plus the ongoing battle against jamming. But in his tweet he also cites satellite costs, which should not be allocated as "Ukraine related" 
costs (and I don't think the cyberdefense and jamming defense work should be
either)

David Lang

On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Kurtis Heimerl via Starlink wrote:

> This thread (https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456)
> strongly argues that Starlink is largely paid for their service, at 
> least on the consumer side. I imagine there are significant 
> operational expenses in dealing with the various actors involved but 
> not on the basic model.
>
> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 9:06 AM Juliusz Chroboczek via Starlink 
> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>
>> > In essence, once you give something away for free, not even setting 
>> > the expectation that it’s a “freemium” model, it’s very hard to get 
>> > out of it. If you then claim your costs are way higher than what 
>> > analysis work out, eyebrows raise way above the hairline.
>>
>> Uh.  Hmm.
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

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

[Benjamin Henrion]

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Le ven. 14 oct. 2022 à 20:32, Larry Press via Starlink <
starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> a écrit :

> SpaceX has given a more detailed statement of expenses to the Pentagon:
>
> https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex-starlink-ukraine/index.html
>
> They have been "paid" in favorable publicity and have tested/refined
> things like mobile connectivity.
>
> Aren't the companies that supply weapons, ammunition, etc. paid?
>

When you read that governments are spending a significant budget on
Ukraine, it's to feed their own weapon industry.

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

[David Lang]

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some interesting tidbits in that article

1. 25k dishes rather than the 15k I had heard befor
2. they are providing full business rates rather than consumer rates
2a. it's interesting that they can do this with the consumer dishes, although a 
lot of what I saw shipped were the gen1 (round) dishes, which may be better than 
the gen 2 consumer dishes.

yes, the companies who manufacture the weapons have been paid in full.

I think it's worth pointing out that Starlink was never intended to be the 
entire communications infrastructure for a country. I think it would be a very 
interesting thing to investigate what the actual density of users and data usage 
is (there is a graph posted, but I haven't tried to get a good enough copy of it 
to see the units). It could confirm/refute the "starlink can't scale" argument

David Lang

On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Larry Press wrote:

> SpaceX has given a more detailed statement of expenses to the Pentagon:
> https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex-starlink-ukraine/index.html
>
> They have been "paid" in favorable publicity and have tested/refined things like mobile connectivity.
>
> Aren't the companies that supply weapons, ammunition, etc. paid?
>
> Larry
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Starlink <starlink-bounces@lists.bufferbloat.net> on behalf of David Lang via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
> Sent: Friday, October 14, 2022 10:28 AM
> To: Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl@cs.washington.edu>
> Cc: Starlink list <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
> Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian army?
>
> Having now read more info on this, less significant than the $80m total figure
> is the $20m/month figure he quoted. With 15k dishes as the figure that they sent
> (separate from whatever has been purchased on the commercial side), that works
> out to 1.3k/dish/month, which is very high.
>
> now, not being able to deploy reliable ground stations inside Ukraine could be
> driving up costs, plus the ongoing battle against jamming. But in his tweet he
> also cites satellite costs, which should not be allocated as "Ukraine related"
> costs (and I don't think the cyberdefense and jamming defense work should be
> either)
>
> David Lang
>
> On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Kurtis Heimerl via Starlink wrote:
>
>> This thread (https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456__;!!P7nkOOY!reUDfoQpkbJ6YAQ6h436UHdL9D0lnxDeqlc29JPUsrl8V_02dlWYYFi4zfQ-CCRLKetEGxza7FjOyJDcUURE6WtPnA$  )
>> strongly argues that Starlink is largely paid for their service, at
>> least on the consumer side. I imagine there are significant
>> operational expenses in dealing with the various actors involved but
>> not on the basic model.
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 9:06 AM Juliusz Chroboczek via Starlink
>> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> In essence, once you give something away for free, not even setting the
>>>> expectation that it’s a “freemium” model, it’s very hard to get out of it. If
>>>> you then claim your costs are way higher than what analysis work out, eyebrows
>>>> raise way above the hairline.
>>>
>>> Uh.  Hmm.
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Starlink mailing list
>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink__;!!P7nkOOY!reUDfoQpkbJ6YAQ6h436UHdL9D0lnxDeqlc29JPUsrl8V_02dlWYYFi4zfQ-CCRLKetEGxza7FjOyJDcUUSVCxIH-w$
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink__;!!P7nkOOY!reUDfoQpkbJ6YAQ6h436UHdL9D0lnxDeqlc29JPUsrl8V_02dlWYYFi4zfQ-CCRLKetEGxza7FjOyJDcUUSVCxIH-w$
>

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

[David Lang]

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If spacex is providing the high-end/business grade service to all terminals 
that they normally charge $4500/month for, reimbursement should be based on 
that.

Base it on the normal service pricing, not on cost-plus (if it were based on 
cost-plus it would be an utter windfall for SpaceX as they are still in the 
stage of building the service, and so there is a much higher spend rate to 
expand the service at this point than the ongoing maintinance of it)

while the satellites do support that area, they also support the rest of the 
service, and if they weren't supporting Ukraine, there wouldn't be any fewer 
satellites launched.

I've seen too many games played with 'fully loaded costs' (sometimes backfiring 
on the people tinkering with the numbers), and so it's something I watch out 
for.

lies, damn lies, and statistics, 'fully loaded costs' tend to be heavy on 
statistics ;-)

David Lang

On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, tom@evslin.com wrote:

> Putting aside the timing of Elon's complaint about cost right after the spat over his Ukrainian "peace plan", It is certainly reasonable for Starlink to get paid like other weapon suppliers who didn't give out free samples to prove their usefulness, Given that they should be reimbursed based on loaded cost plus profit like anyone else. I'm sure the other suppliers allocate their overhead costs when pricing weapon systems. They'd be out of business otherwise. The satellites are part of Starlink's fixed overhead so a portion of their costs should be allocated to service provided in Ukraine.
>
> All that being said, it would be terrible if Ukraine got less than the best support that can be provided.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Starlink <starlink-bounces@lists.bufferbloat.net> On Behalf Of David Lang via Starlink
> Sent: Friday, October 14, 2022 1:28 PM
> To: Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl@cs.washington.edu>
> Cc: Starlink list <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
> Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian army?
>
> Having now read more info on this, less significant than the $80m total figure is the $20m/month figure he quoted. With 15k dishes as the figure that they sent (separate from whatever has been purchased on the commercial side), that works out to 1.3k/dish/month, which is very high.
>
> now, not being able to deploy reliable ground stations inside Ukraine could be driving up costs, plus the ongoing battle against jamming. But in his tweet he also cites satellite costs, which should not be allocated as "Ukraine related"
> costs (and I don't think the cyberdefense and jamming defense work should be
> either)
>
> David Lang
>
> On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Kurtis Heimerl via Starlink wrote:
>
>> This thread (https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456)
>> strongly argues that Starlink is largely paid for their service, at
>> least on the consumer side. I imagine there are significant
>> operational expenses in dealing with the various actors involved but
>> not on the basic model.
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 9:06 AM Juliusz Chroboczek via Starlink
>> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> In essence, once you give something away for free, not even setting
>>>> the expectation that it’s a “freemium” model, it’s very hard to get
>>>> out of it. If you then claim your costs are way higher than what
>>>> analysis work out, eyebrows raise way above the hairline.
>>>
>>> Uh.  Hmm.
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Starlink mailing list
>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
>

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

[David Lang]

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Also, they didn't say that SpaceX was cutting service or stopping funding it, 
they just said that they aren't going to continue to provide the service for 
free indefinantly and are not going to keep providing lots of dishes for free 
(apparently there are around 500/month being destroyed due to combat)

David Lang

  On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, David Lang wrote:

> Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2022 12:35:20 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Lang <david@lang.hm>
> To: Larry Press <lpress@csudh.edu>
> Cc: Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl@cs.washington.edu>, David Lang <david@lang.hm>,
>     Starlink list <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
> Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian army?
> 
> some interesting tidbits in that article
>
> 1. 25k dishes rather than the 15k I had heard befor
> 2. they are providing full business rates rather than consumer rates
> 2a. it's interesting that they can do this with the consumer dishes, although 
> a lot of what I saw shipped were the gen1 (round) dishes, which may be better 
> than the gen 2 consumer dishes.
>
> yes, the companies who manufacture the weapons have been paid in full.
>
> I think it's worth pointing out that Starlink was never intended to be the 
> entire communications infrastructure for a country. I think it would be a 
> very interesting thing to investigate what the actual density of users and 
> data usage is (there is a graph posted, but I haven't tried to get a good 
> enough copy of it to see the units). It could confirm/refute the "starlink 
> can't scale" argument
>
> David Lang
>
> On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Larry Press wrote:
>
>> SpaceX has given a more detailed statement of expenses to the Pentagon:
>> https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex-starlink-ukraine/index.html
>> 
>> They have been "paid" in favorable publicity and have tested/refined things 
>> like mobile connectivity.
>> 
>> Aren't the companies that supply weapons, ammunition, etc. paid?
>> 
>> Larry
>> 
>> 
>> ________________________________
>> From: Starlink <starlink-bounces@lists.bufferbloat.net> on behalf of David 
>> Lang via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
>> Sent: Friday, October 14, 2022 10:28 AM
>> To: Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl@cs.washington.edu>
>> Cc: Starlink list <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
>> Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian army?
>> 
>> Having now read more info on this, less significant than the $80m total 
>> figure
>> is the $20m/month figure he quoted. With 15k dishes as the figure that they 
>> sent
>> (separate from whatever has been purchased on the commercial side), that 
>> works
>> out to 1.3k/dish/month, which is very high.
>> 
>> now, not being able to deploy reliable ground stations inside Ukraine could 
>> be
>> driving up costs, plus the ongoing battle against jamming. But in his tweet 
>> he
>> also cites satellite costs, which should not be allocated as "Ukraine 
>> related"
>> costs (and I don't think the cyberdefense and jamming defense work should 
>> be
>> either)
>> 
>> David Lang
>> 
>> On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Kurtis Heimerl via Starlink wrote:
>> 
>>> This thread 
>>> (https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456__;!!P7nkOOY!reUDfoQpkbJ6YAQ6h436UHdL9D0lnxDeqlc29JPUsrl8V_02dlWYYFi4zfQ-CCRLKetEGxza7FjOyJDcUURE6WtPnA$ 
>>> )
>>> strongly argues that Starlink is largely paid for their service, at
>>> least on the consumer side. I imagine there are significant
>>> operational expenses in dealing with the various actors involved but
>>> not on the basic model.
>>> 
>>> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 9:06 AM Juliusz Chroboczek via Starlink
>>> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> In essence, once you give something away for free, not even setting the
>>>>> expectation that it’s a “freemium” model, it’s very hard to get out of 
>>>>> it. If
>>>>> you then claim your costs are way higher than what analysis work out, 
>>>>> eyebrows
>>>>> raise way above the hairline.
>>>> 
>>>> Uh.  Hmm.
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Starlink mailing list
>>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink__;!!P7nkOOY!reUDfoQpkbJ6YAQ6h436UHdL9D0lnxDeqlc29JPUsrl8V_02dlWYYFi4zfQ-CCRLKetEGxza7FjOyJDcUUSVCxIH-w$
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Starlink mailing list
>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink__;!!P7nkOOY!reUDfoQpkbJ6YAQ6h436UHdL9D0lnxDeqlc29JPUsrl8V_02dlWYYFi4zfQ-CCRLKetEGxza7FjOyJDcUUSVCxIH-w$
>

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

[Dave Taht]

If there is one increasing amount of sadness that has grown and grown
in me over the last 200+ days,
it's now the bickering over who should get paid what to support the
deaths of tens of thousands
on both sides in the ukraine, and further increasing the risks of
nuclear conflict, for the sake of profit.

War, as Butler said, is a racket.

https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html#c1

I am painfully aware of the fragility of our information channels
connecting people together. It wouldn't take much
to sever much of the fiber connectivity of the world, and considerably
less to completely destroy all our space infrastructure.

In war, much technological progress can be made, and certainly seeing
the array of cobbled up but effective weaponry is an example, and the
many uses of high speed battlefield communications... but it was my
hope, in the worldwide co-operation and mutual aid that led to
resolving the covid crises, with "only" a few million deaths - that
somehow, humanity would find more and ever better ways, to carry
civilization forward, and indeed, into the stars, instead of risking
billions more.

I spent a lot of time, in nicaragua, victim of a proxy war between the
USSR and the USA, and it wasn't until the surrounding states barred
landings of ammunition and fuel from both sides, and those ran low,
and a magnificent lady, with family
on both sides of the war, ran with broken legs, for president, and
won, in the brief period while the ussr, was distracted by its own
dissolution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violeta_Chamorro

Some can point at how SDI helped bankrupt the USSR, and for all we
know, perhaps the lack of money there,
will help end this conflict, but regardless, what Smedley wrote so
long ago, is weighing on my mind.

"WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most
vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one
in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what
it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group
knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very
few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make
huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the
conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made
in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their
huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war
millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of
them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in
a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened
nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many
of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were
wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are
victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly
is exploited by the few -- the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of
blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones.
Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic
instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking
taxation for generations and generations. "

On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 12:41 PM David Lang via Starlink
<starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
> If spacex is providing the high-end/business grade service to all terminals
> that they normally charge $4500/month for, reimbursement should be based on
> that.
>
> Base it on the normal service pricing, not on cost-plus (if it were based on
> cost-plus it would be an utter windfall for SpaceX as they are still in the
> stage of building the service, and so there is a much higher spend rate to
> expand the service at this point than the ongoing maintinance of it)
>
> while the satellites do support that area, they also support the rest of the
> service, and if they weren't supporting Ukraine, there wouldn't be any fewer
> satellites launched.
>
> I've seen too many games played with 'fully loaded costs' (sometimes backfiring
> on the people tinkering with the numbers), and so it's something I watch out
> for.
>
> lies, damn lies, and statistics, 'fully loaded costs' tend to be heavy on
> statistics ;-)
>
> David Lang
>
> On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, tom@evslin.com wrote:
>
> > Putting aside the timing of Elon's complaint about cost right after the spat over his Ukrainian "peace plan", It is certainly reasonable for Starlink to get paid like other weapon suppliers who didn't give out free samples to prove their usefulness, Given that they should be reimbursed based on loaded cost plus profit like anyone else. I'm sure the other suppliers allocate their overhead costs when pricing weapon systems. They'd be out of business otherwise. The satellites are part of Starlink's fixed overhead so a portion of their costs should be allocated to service provided in Ukraine.
> >
> > All that being said, it would be terrible if Ukraine got less than the best support that can be provided.
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Starlink <starlink-bounces@lists.bufferbloat.net> On Behalf Of David Lang via Starlink
> > Sent: Friday, October 14, 2022 1:28 PM
> > To: Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl@cs.washington.edu>
> > Cc: Starlink list <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
> > Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian army?
> >
> > Having now read more info on this, less significant than the $80m total figure is the $20m/month figure he quoted. With 15k dishes as the figure that they sent (separate from whatever has been purchased on the commercial side), that works out to 1.3k/dish/month, which is very high.
> >
> > now, not being able to deploy reliable ground stations inside Ukraine could be driving up costs, plus the ongoing battle against jamming. But in his tweet he also cites satellite costs, which should not be allocated as "Ukraine related"
> > costs (and I don't think the cyberdefense and jamming defense work should be
> > either)
> >
> > David Lang
> >
> > On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Kurtis Heimerl via Starlink wrote:
> >
> >> This thread (https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456)
> >> strongly argues that Starlink is largely paid for their service, at
> >> least on the consumer side. I imagine there are significant
> >> operational expenses in dealing with the various actors involved but
> >> not on the basic model.
> >>
> >> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 9:06 AM Juliusz Chroboczek via Starlink
> >> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> In essence, once you give something away for free, not even setting
> >>>> the expectation that it’s a “freemium” model, it’s very hard to get
> >>>> out of it. If you then claim your costs are way higher than what
> >>>> analysis work out, eyebrows raise way above the hairline.
> >>>
> >>> Uh.  Hmm.
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Starlink mailing list
> >>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> >>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Starlink mailing list
> >> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> >> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink



-- 
This song goes out to all the folk that thought Stadia would work:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dtaht_the-mushroom-song-activity-6981366665607352320-FXtz
Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC

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

[Mike Puchol]

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Pumping out RF at fairly high power levels, and pointing an antenna at a satellite, are both things very easy to do for someone like Russia. To then jam 500 MHz of spectrum all at once is not that trivial, and one can get creative, eg by only attacking the reference subcarriers in OFDM, thus concentrating RF power on those, rather than the whole channel.

There are some papers written around jamming LTE by attacking specific resources instead of the whole band, making the attack less conspicuous, something similar could be applied against Starlink. By not using brute force, you also make the attack harder to detect and counter.

My view is that Russia is not worried about being noticed, and just applies brute force.

Best,

Mike
On Oct 14, 2022 at 20:26 +0200, Juliusz Chroboczek <jch@irif.fr>, wrote:
> > Juliusz, see the Twitter thread I linked to, it explains precisely the
> > jamming scenarios they could be facing, and how they are possible.
>
> I saw it after I wrote my question, and it does explain a lot. Thanks.
>
> Do you have an idea how difficult it is to actually do in practice? Is it
> a simple matter of plugging a second-hand VSAT dish to an old amateur
> radio rig, or do you actually need to be a research lab of the Moscow
> Academy of Sciences to do it?
>
> -- Juliusz

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1872 bytes --]

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

[Dave Taht]

On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 1:07 PM David Lang via Starlink
<starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
> Also, they didn't say that SpaceX was cutting service or stopping funding it,
> they just said that they aren't going to continue to provide the service for
> free indefinantly and are not going to keep providing lots of dishes for free
> (apparently there are around 500/month being destroyed due to combat)

Meanwhile, oleg repairs shot up or broken terminals with what spare
parts he can scrounge.

https://twitter.com/olegkutkov

> David Lang
>
>   On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, David Lang wrote:
>
> > Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2022 12:35:20 -0700 (PDT)
> > From: David Lang <david@lang.hm>
> > To: Larry Press <lpress@csudh.edu>
> > Cc: Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl@cs.washington.edu>, David Lang <david@lang.hm>,
> >     Starlink list <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
> > Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian army?
> >
> > some interesting tidbits in that article
> >
> > 1. 25k dishes rather than the 15k I had heard befor
> > 2. they are providing full business rates rather than consumer rates
> > 2a. it's interesting that they can do this with the consumer dishes, although
> > a lot of what I saw shipped were the gen1 (round) dishes, which may be better
> > than the gen 2 consumer dishes.
> >
> > yes, the companies who manufacture the weapons have been paid in full.
> >
> > I think it's worth pointing out that Starlink was never intended to be the
> > entire communications infrastructure for a country. I think it would be a
> > very interesting thing to investigate what the actual density of users and
> > data usage is (there is a graph posted, but I haven't tried to get a good
> > enough copy of it to see the units). It could confirm/refute the "starlink
> > can't scale" argument
> >
> > David Lang
> >
> > On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Larry Press wrote:
> >
> >> SpaceX has given a more detailed statement of expenses to the Pentagon:
> >> https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex-starlink-ukraine/index.html
> >>
> >> They have been "paid" in favorable publicity and have tested/refined things
> >> like mobile connectivity.
> >>
> >> Aren't the companies that supply weapons, ammunition, etc. paid?
> >>
> >> Larry
> >>
> >>
> >> ________________________________
> >> From: Starlink <starlink-bounces@lists.bufferbloat.net> on behalf of David
> >> Lang via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
> >> Sent: Friday, October 14, 2022 10:28 AM
> >> To: Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl@cs.washington.edu>
> >> Cc: Starlink list <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
> >> Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian army?
> >>
> >> Having now read more info on this, less significant than the $80m total
> >> figure
> >> is the $20m/month figure he quoted. With 15k dishes as the figure that they
> >> sent
> >> (separate from whatever has been purchased on the commercial side), that
> >> works
> >> out to 1.3k/dish/month, which is very high.
> >>
> >> now, not being able to deploy reliable ground stations inside Ukraine could
> >> be
> >> driving up costs, plus the ongoing battle against jamming. But in his tweet
> >> he
> >> also cites satellite costs, which should not be allocated as "Ukraine
> >> related"
> >> costs (and I don't think the cyberdefense and jamming defense work should
> >> be
> >> either)
> >>
> >> David Lang
> >>
> >> On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Kurtis Heimerl via Starlink wrote:
> >>
> >>> This thread
> >>> (https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456__;!!P7nkOOY!reUDfoQpkbJ6YAQ6h436UHdL9D0lnxDeqlc29JPUsrl8V_02dlWYYFi4zfQ-CCRLKetEGxza7FjOyJDcUURE6WtPnA$
> >>> )
> >>> strongly argues that Starlink is largely paid for their service, at
> >>> least on the consumer side. I imagine there are significant
> >>> operational expenses in dealing with the various actors involved but
> >>> not on the basic model.
> >>>
> >>> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 9:06 AM Juliusz Chroboczek via Starlink
> >>> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> In essence, once you give something away for free, not even setting the
> >>>>> expectation that it’s a “freemium” model, it’s very hard to get out of
> >>>>> it. If
> >>>>> you then claim your costs are way higher than what analysis work out,
> >>>>> eyebrows
> >>>>> raise way above the hairline.
> >>>>
> >>>> Uh.  Hmm.
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> Starlink mailing list
> >>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> >>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink__;!!P7nkOOY!reUDfoQpkbJ6YAQ6h436UHdL9D0lnxDeqlc29JPUsrl8V_02dlWYYFi4zfQ-CCRLKetEGxza7FjOyJDcUUSVCxIH-w$
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Starlink mailing list
> >>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> >>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink__;!!P7nkOOY!reUDfoQpkbJ6YAQ6h436UHdL9D0lnxDeqlc29JPUsrl8V_02dlWYYFi4zfQ-CCRLKetEGxza7FjOyJDcUUSVCxIH-w$
> >_______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink



-- 
This song goes out to all the folk that thought Stadia would work:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dtaht_the-mushroom-song-activity-6981366665607352320-FXtz
Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC

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

[Larry Press]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 5553 bytes --]

> (there is a graph posted, but I haven't tried to get a good
> enough copy of it to see the units).

Is this what you are referring to?

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1580572380535001088
Elon Musk on Twitter: "Starlink data usage growth in Ukraine"<https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1580572380535001088>
Starlink data usage growth in Ukraine . 13 Oct 2022 14:53:15
twitter.com

________________________________
From: David Lang <david@lang.hm>
Sent: Friday, October 14, 2022 1:07 PM
To: David Lang <david@lang.hm>
Cc: Larry Press <lpress@csudh.edu>; Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl@cs.washington.edu>; Starlink list <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian army?

Also, they didn't say that SpaceX was cutting service or stopping funding it,
they just said that they aren't going to continue to provide the service for
free indefinantly and are not going to keep providing lots of dishes for free
(apparently there are around 500/month being destroyed due to combat)

David Lang

  On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, David Lang wrote:

> Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2022 12:35:20 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Lang <david@lang.hm>
> To: Larry Press <lpress@csudh.edu>
> Cc: Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl@cs.washington.edu>, David Lang <david@lang.hm>,
>     Starlink list <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
> Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian army?
>
> some interesting tidbits in that article
>
> 1. 25k dishes rather than the 15k I had heard befor
> 2. they are providing full business rates rather than consumer rates
> 2a. it's interesting that they can do this with the consumer dishes, although
> a lot of what I saw shipped were the gen1 (round) dishes, which may be better
> than the gen 2 consumer dishes.
>
> yes, the companies who manufacture the weapons have been paid in full.
>
> I think it's worth pointing out that Starlink was never intended to be the
> entire communications infrastructure for a country. I think it would be a
> very interesting thing to investigate what the actual density of users and
> data usage is (there is a graph posted, but I haven't tried to get a good
> enough copy of it to see the units). It could confirm/refute the "starlink
> can't scale" argument
>
> David Lang
>
> On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Larry Press wrote:
>
>> SpaceX has given a more detailed statement of expenses to the Pentagon:
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex-starlink-ukraine/index.html__;!!P7nkOOY!rDEzzSiy8qtGlgTibA-Lr3EWZACew7sLaKOButYjCYaXZcpu7kC8fFEzdw_aSA5LPOS7NZaiij7XHw$
>>
>> They have been "paid" in favorable publicity and have tested/refined things
>> like mobile connectivity.
>>
>> Aren't the companies that supply weapons, ammunition, etc. paid?
>>
>> Larry
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>> From: Starlink <starlink-bounces@lists.bufferbloat.net> on behalf of David
>> Lang via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
>> Sent: Friday, October 14, 2022 10:28 AM
>> To: Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl@cs.washington.edu>
>> Cc: Starlink list <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
>> Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian army?
>>
>> Having now read more info on this, less significant than the $80m total
>> figure
>> is the $20m/month figure he quoted. With 15k dishes as the figure that they
>> sent
>> (separate from whatever has been purchased on the commercial side), that
>> works
>> out to 1.3k/dish/month, which is very high.
>>
>> now, not being able to deploy reliable ground stations inside Ukraine could
>> be
>> driving up costs, plus the ongoing battle against jamming. But in his tweet
>> he
>> also cites satellite costs, which should not be allocated as "Ukraine
>> related"
>> costs (and I don't think the cyberdefense and jamming defense work should
>> be
>> either)
>>
>> David Lang
>>
>> On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Kurtis Heimerl via Starlink wrote:
>>
>>> This thread
>>> (https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456__;!!P7nkOOY!reUDfoQpkbJ6YAQ6h436UHdL9D0lnxDeqlc29JPUsrl8V_02dlWYYFi4zfQ-CCRLKetEGxza7FjOyJDcUURE6WtPnA$
>>> )
>>> strongly argues that Starlink is largely paid for their service, at
>>> least on the consumer side. I imagine there are significant
>>> operational expenses in dealing with the various actors involved but
>>> not on the basic model.
>>>
>>> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 9:06 AM Juliusz Chroboczek via Starlink
>>> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> In essence, once you give something away for free, not even setting the
>>>>> expectation that it’s a “freemium” model, it’s very hard to get out of
>>>>> it. If
>>>>> you then claim your costs are way higher than what analysis work out,
>>>>> eyebrows
>>>>> raise way above the hairline.
>>>>
>>>> Uh.  Hmm.
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Starlink mailing list
>>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink__;!!P7nkOOY!reUDfoQpkbJ6YAQ6h436UHdL9D0lnxDeqlc29JPUsrl8V_02dlWYYFi4zfQ-CCRLKetEGxza7FjOyJDcUUSVCxIH-w$
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Starlink mailing list
>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink__;!!P7nkOOY!reUDfoQpkbJ6YAQ6h436UHdL9D0lnxDeqlc29JPUsrl8V_02dlWYYFi4zfQ-CCRLKetEGxza7FjOyJDcUUSVCxIH-w$
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 12148 bytes --]

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

[Sebastian Moeller]

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I wonder whether some form of communication would not be better handled by a dedicated PR department:
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/tkg_2021/__145.html

Stopping supplying Ukraine with starlink is off the table again and starlink apparently will keep footing the bill.

Again I wonder whether a well crafted press release about the monitary equivalent of what starlink already did and predicts to do in the future together with a veiled question of how wise it seems putting the supply of such important infrastructure for ukraine solely in the hands of corporate generosity might have raised the apparently desired awareness without all that much bruhaha?

Long story short: Starlink/Musk keep supplying Ukraine with important internet access. Which IMHO is a good thing, even though I agree with the sentiment that supplying this infrastructure should not rely on generosity of non-state actors.

Regards
        Sebadtian

On 15 October 2022 18:51:07 CEST, Larry Press via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>> (there is a graph posted, but I haven't tried to get a good
>> enough copy of it to see the units).
>
>Is this what you are referring to?
>
>https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1580572380535001088
>Elon Musk on Twitter: "Starlink data usage growth in Ukraine"<https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1580572380535001088>
>Starlink data usage growth in Ukraine . 13 Oct 2022 14:53:15
>twitter.com
>
>________________________________
>From: David Lang <david@lang.hm>
>Sent: Friday, October 14, 2022 1:07 PM
>To: David Lang <david@lang.hm>
>Cc: Larry Press <lpress@csudh.edu>; Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl@cs.washington.edu>; Starlink list <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
>Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian army?
>
>Also, they didn't say that SpaceX was cutting service or stopping funding it,
>they just said that they aren't going to continue to provide the service for
>free indefinantly and are not going to keep providing lots of dishes for free
>(apparently there are around 500/month being destroyed due to combat)
>
>David Lang
>
>  On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, David Lang wrote:
>
>> Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2022 12:35:20 -0700 (PDT)
>> From: David Lang <david@lang.hm>
>> To: Larry Press <lpress@csudh.edu>
>> Cc: Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl@cs.washington.edu>, David Lang <david@lang.hm>,
>>     Starlink list <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
>> Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian army?
>>
>> some interesting tidbits in that article
>>
>> 1. 25k dishes rather than the 15k I had heard befor
>> 2. they are providing full business rates rather than consumer rates
>> 2a. it's interesting that they can do this with the consumer dishes, although
>> a lot of what I saw shipped were the gen1 (round) dishes, which may be better
>> than the gen 2 consumer dishes.
>>
>> yes, the companies who manufacture the weapons have been paid in full.
>>
>> I think it's worth pointing out that Starlink was never intended to be the
>> entire communications infrastructure for a country. I think it would be a
>> very interesting thing to investigate what the actual density of users and
>> data usage is (there is a graph posted, but I haven't tried to get a good
>> enough copy of it to see the units). It could confirm/refute the "starlink
>> can't scale" argument
>>
>> David Lang
>>
>> On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Larry Press wrote:
>>
>>> SpaceX has given a more detailed statement of expenses to the Pentagon:
>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex-starlink-ukraine/index.html__;!!P7nkOOY!rDEzzSiy8qtGlgTibA-Lr3EWZACew7sLaKOButYjCYaXZcpu7kC8fFEzdw_aSA5LPOS7NZaiij7XHw$
>>>
>>> They have been "paid" in favorable publicity and have tested/refined things
>>> like mobile connectivity.
>>>
>>> Aren't the companies that supply weapons, ammunition, etc. paid?
>>>
>>> Larry
>>>
>>>
>>> ________________________________
>>> From: Starlink <starlink-bounces@lists.bufferbloat.net> on behalf of David
>>> Lang via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
>>> Sent: Friday, October 14, 2022 10:28 AM
>>> To: Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl@cs.washington.edu>
>>> Cc: Starlink list <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
>>> Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian army?
>>>
>>> Having now read more info on this, less significant than the $80m total
>>> figure
>>> is the $20m/month figure he quoted. With 15k dishes as the figure that they
>>> sent
>>> (separate from whatever has been purchased on the commercial side), that
>>> works
>>> out to 1.3k/dish/month, which is very high.
>>>
>>> now, not being able to deploy reliable ground stations inside Ukraine could
>>> be
>>> driving up costs, plus the ongoing battle against jamming. But in his tweet
>>> he
>>> also cites satellite costs, which should not be allocated as "Ukraine
>>> related"
>>> costs (and I don't think the cyberdefense and jamming defense work should
>>> be
>>> either)
>>>
>>> David Lang
>>>
>>> On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Kurtis Heimerl via Starlink wrote:
>>>
>>>> This thread
>>>> (https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456__;!!P7nkOOY!reUDfoQpkbJ6YAQ6h436UHdL9D0lnxDeqlc29JPUsrl8V_02dlWYYFi4zfQ-CCRLKetEGxza7FjOyJDcUURE6WtPnA$
>>>> )
>>>> strongly argues that Starlink is largely paid for their service, at
>>>> least on the consumer side. I imagine there are significant
>>>> operational expenses in dealing with the various actors involved but
>>>> not on the basic model.
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 9:06 AM Juliusz Chroboczek via Starlink
>>>> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> In essence, once you give something away for free, not even setting the
>>>>>> expectation that it’s a “freemium” model, it’s very hard to get out of
>>>>>> it. If
>>>>>> you then claim your costs are way higher than what analysis work out,
>>>>>> eyebrows
>>>>>> raise way above the hairline.
>>>>>
>>>>> Uh.  Hmm.
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Starlink mailing list
>>>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink__;!!P7nkOOY!reUDfoQpkbJ6YAQ6h436UHdL9D0lnxDeqlc29JPUsrl8V_02dlWYYFi4zfQ-CCRLKetEGxza7FjOyJDcUUSVCxIH-w$
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Starlink mailing list
>>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink__;!!P7nkOOY!reUDfoQpkbJ6YAQ6h436UHdL9D0lnxDeqlc29JPUsrl8V_02dlWYYFi4zfQ-CCRLKetEGxza7FjOyJDcUUSVCxIH-w$
>>

-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

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

[Bruce Perens]

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On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 7:42 AM Sebastian Moeller via Starlink <
starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:

> I wonder whether some form of communication would not be better handled by
> a dedicated PR department:
>

Unfortunately the biggest PR problem SpaceX/Starlink has is not one that
can be mediated by a PR department. Elon says stupid things. There is the
far-right conspiracy theorism, his belief that population collapse will end
society if we don't start having more babies, and his recent statement on
how he believes the war in Ukraine should be ended. A lot of this seems
totally nuts to me and is not going to endear him to people. The impacts
upon SpaceX and Tesla have been palpable.

I spent some time with Steve Jobs in 12 years at Pixar. There were horror
stories about him, but he'd matured. He wasn't perfect, but a lot better.
The problem is that he was probably as old then as Elon is now.

    Thanks

    Bruce

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

[Dave Taht]

On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 1:45 AM Bruce Perens via Starlink
<starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 7:42 AM Sebastian Moeller via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>
>> I wonder whether some form of communication would not be better handled by a dedicated PR department:

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

If you think stuff run by PR departments is better, please read Ed
Bernay's work, which has fallen out of copyright.

>
>
> Unfortunately the biggest PR problem SpaceX/Starlink has is not one that can be mediated by a PR department. Elon says stupid things.

>"There is the far-right conspiracy theorism,"

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

I am hopefully well known as a pretty rigorously "fair" person.[1] It
comes from this:

http://ronsravings.blogspot.com/2012/10/memorial-service-eulogy.html

and to a huge extent my outlook on life and the American way, is
actually reflected by the fq_codel and cake algorithms -

" fq codel (now IETF standard RFC8290) is a uniquely “American”
algorithm. It's *fair*. It gives the “little guy” - the little packet,
the first packets in a new connection to anywhere, a little boost
until the flow achieves parity with other flows from other sources,
with minimal buffering. This means that all network traffic gets
treated equally - faster. Isn’t that what you want in a network
neutral framework? DNS, gaming traffic, voip, videoconferencing, and
the first packets of any new flow, to anywhere, get a small boost.
That’s it. Big flows - from anybody - from netflix to google to
comcast - all achieve parity, with minimal delay and buffering, at a
wide variety of real round trip times." -
https://blog.cerowrt.org/post/net_neutrality_customers/
...

Elon has definitely shifted right in the past years moving from
california to texas, and even if it's an uncalculated move (doubt it)
- in order to sell "green technology" into the other half of the
country, he needs to talk to things that those folk care about.

If that means offending the green yuppie tesla base into buying more
rivians, and convinces the red set in the center of the country to
switch to electric trucks from ford... It's still a win, from his
long-stated perspectives of converting the economy over to greener
energies.

"his belief that population collapse will end society if we don't
start having more babies, "

He's stopped far short of "banning abortion", for example, and the
effects of population collapse can be demonstrated in
aging populations in Japan, especially, who have also made a big
investment into robotization.

It does bug me that in repeated posts he doesn't show how, in America
at least, immigration has countered the not-enough-for-replacement
birth rate. I'm a big fan of immigration, always will be - (but I'd
emigrate if only I could find a country willing to take me in!)

"and his recent statement on how he believes the war in Ukraine should
be ended. "

Someone(s) need to propose answers on how wars can end. I already
posted my interpretation of the Nicaraguan
peace, as to what happened when both sides couldn't send in bullets anymore.

"A lot of this seems totally nuts to me and is not going to endear him
to people. The impacts upon SpaceX and Tesla have been palpable."

It is impossible to be endearing to all people.

"The hell with it … even though Starlink is still losing money & other
companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding
Ukraine govt for free."

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1581345747777179651

>
> I spent some time with Steve Jobs in 12 years at Pixar. There were horror stories about him, but he'd matured. He wasn't perfect, but a lot better. The problem is that he was probably as old then as Elon is now.

Did he thrust iphones into a war? witness the complete collapse of all
other infrastructure technologies? Run the risk of nuclear war, with a
communication tech that was hoped to bring the benefit of the internet
to all?

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

Gandhi?

Pol Pot?

Winston Churchill?


>
>     Thanks

[1] for the record, I have published very little about my politics,
and hope to not have to care more than I do. This
piece is the closest I came to skewering every perspective there is:
http://the-edge.blogspot.com/2003_06_15_the-edge_archive.html#105582160924824821

and if someone could tell ME what my politics are after reading that,
I'd probably find something to quibble with.


>     Bruce
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink



-- 
This song goes out to all the folk that thought Stadia would work:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dtaht_the-mushroom-song-activity-6981366665607352320-FXtz
Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC

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

[Sebastian Moeller]

Hi Dave,

On 16 October 2022 18:31:07 CEST, Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 1:45 AM Bruce Perens via Starlink
><starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 7:42 AM Sebastian Moeller via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> I wonder whether some form of communication would not be better handled by a dedicated PR department:
>
>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.

Yes, I generally agree.
However in this case, I disagree somewhat. Twitter IMHO is a terrible tool for anything of relevance and outside small circles of friends or like minded individuals. As a tool for communicating policy or complex content I am less convinced that twitter adds much (sorry if this sounds old man shouting at the clouds).
But in the starlink/ukraine topic it might be fascinating seeing decision making changing in 'real-time', but neither Starlink nor Musk come out looking all that good.
Which is somewhat puzzling, as they earned a lot of goodwill by their initial (and apparently their continuing) actions, so why go screw this up? In this instance I believe some PR experts to discuss any intended tweet to make sure it truly reflects the intended policy seems an improvement to me.


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

+1; that is a different beast than twitter though which is essentially for unvetted hot-takes, no?


>
>If you think stuff run by PR departments is better, please read Ed
>Bernay's work, which has fallen out of copyright.

Given that so far I liked all your recommendations I should check this out. However I do not think PR publications are generally a good thing, just in this instance it might have been a useful tool to avoid unnecessary u-turns.

>
>>
>>
>> Unfortunately the biggest PR problem SpaceX/Starlink has is not one that can be mediated by a PR department. Elon says stupid things.
>
>>"There is the far-right conspiracy theorism,"
>
>I don't see "far-right" conspiracy theorism except from commenters.
>Got a concrete example?
>
>I am hopefully well known as a pretty rigorously "fair" person.[1] It
>comes from this:
>
>http://ronsravings.blogspot.com/2012/10/memorial-service-eulogy.html
>
>and to a huge extent my outlook on life and the American way, is
>actually reflected by the fq_codel and cake algorithms -
>
>" fq codel (now IETF standard RFC8290) is a uniquely “American”
>algorithm. It's *fair*. It gives the “little guy” - the little packet,
>the first packets in a new connection to anywhere, a little boost
>until the flow achieves parity with other flows from other sources,
>with minimal buffering. This means that all network traffic gets
>treated equally - faster. Isn’t that what you want in a network
>neutral framework? DNS, gaming traffic, voip, videoconferencing, and
>the first packets of any new flow, to anywhere, get a small boost.
>That’s it. Big flows - from anybody - from netflix to google to
>comcast - all achieve parity, with minimal delay and buffering, at a
>wide variety of real round trip times." -
>https://blog.cerowrt.org/post/net_neutrality_customers/
>...
>
>Elon has definitely shifted right in the past years moving from
>california to texas, and even if it's an uncalculated move (doubt it)
>- in order to sell "green technology" into the other half of the
>country, he needs to talk to things that those folk care about.
>
>If that means offending the green yuppie tesla base into buying more
>rivians, and convinces the red set in the center of the country to
>switch to electric trucks from ford... It's still a win, from his
>long-stated perspectives of converting the economy over to greener
>energies.
>
>"his belief that population collapse will end society if we don't
>start having more babies, "
>
>He's stopped far short of "banning abortion", for example, and the
>effects of population collapse can be demonstrated in
>aging populations in Japan, especially, who have also made a big
>investment into robotization.
>
>It does bug me that in repeated posts he doesn't show how, in America
>at least, immigration has countered the not-enough-for-replacement
>birth rate. I'm a big fan of immigration, always will be - (but I'd
>emigrate if only I could find a country willing to take me in!)
>
>"and his recent statement on how he believes the war in Ukraine should
>be ended. "
>
>Someone(s) need to propose answers on how wars can end. I already
>posted my interpretation of the Nicaraguan
>peace, as to what happened when both sides couldn't send in bullets anymore.
>
>"A lot of this seems totally nuts to me and is not going to endear him
>to people. The impacts upon SpaceX and Tesla have been palpable."
>
>It is impossible to be endearing to all people.
>
>"The hell with it … even though Starlink is still losing money & other
>companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just keep funding
>Ukraine govt for free."
>
>https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1581345747777179651
>
>>
>> I spent some time with Steve Jobs in 12 years at Pixar. There were horror stories about him, but he'd matured. He wasn't perfect, but a lot better. The problem is that he was probably as old then as Elon is now.
>
>Did he thrust iphones into a war? witness the complete collapse of all
>other infrastructure technologies? Run the risk of nuclear war, with a
>communication tech that was hoped to bring the benefit of the internet
>to all?
>
>A really good question might be - what would steve jobs' have done, in
>this situation? Think different?
>
>Gandhi?
>
>Pol Pot?
>
>Winston Churchill?
>
>
>>
>>     Thanks
>
>[1] for the record, I have published very little about my politics,
>and hope to not have to care more than I do. This
>piece is the closest I came to skewering every perspective there is:
>http://the-edge.blogspot.com/2003_06_15_the-edge_archive.html#105582160924824821
>
>and if someone could tell ME what my politics are after reading that,
>I'd probably find something to quibble with.
>
>
>>     Bruce
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
>
>

-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

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

[Steve Stroh]

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On the battlefield, high power continuous jamming such as you describe
tends not to last very long. There are special missiles (HARM - High speed
AntiRadiation Missile) to remedy that situation. They home in on a jamming
transmitter like a beacon.

One of the stellar attributes about Starlink is that it’s using phased
array antennas on both user terminals and satellites, proving a “tight
beam”. I’m speculating, but my guess is that clever programming is
configuring the satellite beams to be contoured to ignore contested areas
where jamming is being attempted. An additional speculation is that
Starlink is programming both the satellites and user terminals to
continuously authenticate each other’s transmission, allowing them to
ignore spoofing attempts.

Not to mention that the directional nature of the beams allows for a
positional reality check. If a terminal is attempted to be used by the
enemy and the terminal’s internal GPS is spoofed to say it’s well within
Ukraine (good guy territory) rather than its real location outside Ukraine
(bad guy territory), the satellite can discern that a terminal really isn’t
where it’s reporting it is, and that terminal gets (permanently?)
deauthorized.

On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 13:45 Mike Puchol via Starlink <
starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:

> Pumping out RF at fairly high power levels, and pointing an antenna at a
> satellite, are both things very easy to do for someone like Russia. To then
> jam 500 MHz of spectrum all at once is not that trivial, and one can get
> creative, eg by only attacking the reference subcarriers in OFDM, thus
> concentrating RF power on those, rather than the whole channel.
>
> There are some papers written around jamming LTE by attacking specific
> resources instead of the whole band, making the attack less conspicuous,
> something similar could be applied against Starlink. By not using brute
> force, you also make the attack harder to detect and counter.
>
> My view is that Russia is not worried about being noticed, and just
> applies brute force.
>
> Best,
>
> Mike
> On Oct 14, 2022 at 20:26 +0200, Juliusz Chroboczek <jch@irif.fr>, wrote:
>
> Juliusz, see the Twitter thread I linked to, it explains precisely the
> jamming scenarios they could be facing, and how they are possible.
>
>
> I saw it after I wrote my question, and it does explain a lot. Thanks.
>
> Do you have an idea how difficult it is to actually do in practice? Is it
> a simple matter of plugging a second-hand VSAT dish to an old amateur
> radio rig, or do you actually need to be a research lab of the Moscow
> Academy of Sciences to do it?
>
> -- Juliusz
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
-- 
Steve Stroh N8GNJ (he / him / his)
Editor
Zero Retries Newsletter - https://zeroretries.substack.com

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

[Steve Stroh]

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I’m speculating, but given that Starlink is THE communications
infrastructure for much of Ukraine, then the scaling of the ground stations
to provide that level of service must be a significant expense. To provide
that much bandwidth would require deploying a lot of ground stations, each
with expensive hardware, power infrastructure (including backup), fiber
backhaul, skilled labor, and no small amount of fiber bandwidth that SpaceX
has to pay SOMEONE to provide.

Not to mention that anything SpaceX deploys to support Ukraine is a
resource that it could have used for speeding up revenue generation in
lucrative markets like the US.

On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 12:41 David Lang via Starlink <
starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:

> If spacex is providing the high-end/business grade service to all
> terminals
> that they normally charge $4500/month for, reimbursement should be based
> on
> that.
>
> Base it on the normal service pricing, not on cost-plus (if it were based
> on
> cost-plus it would be an utter windfall for SpaceX as they are still in
> the
> stage of building the service, and so there is a much higher spend rate to
> expand the service at this point than the ongoing maintinance of it)
>
> while the satellites do support that area, they also support the rest of
> the
> service, and if they weren't supporting Ukraine, there wouldn't be any
> fewer
> satellites launched.
>
> I've seen too many games played with 'fully loaded costs' (sometimes
> backfiring
> on the people tinkering with the numbers), and so it's something I watch
> out
> for.
>
> lies, damn lies, and statistics, 'fully loaded costs' tend to be heavy on
> statistics ;-)
>
> David Lang
>
> On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, tom@evslin.com wrote:
>
> > Putting aside the timing of Elon's complaint about cost right after the
> spat over his Ukrainian "peace plan", It is certainly reasonable for
> Starlink to get paid like other weapon suppliers who didn't give out free
> samples to prove their usefulness, Given that they should be reimbursed
> based on loaded cost plus profit like anyone else. I'm sure the other
> suppliers allocate their overhead costs when pricing weapon systems. They'd
> be out of business otherwise. The satellites are part of Starlink's fixed
> overhead so a portion of their costs should be allocated to service
> provided in Ukraine.
> >
> > All that being said, it would be terrible if Ukraine got less than the
> best support that can be provided.
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Starlink <starlink-bounces@lists.bufferbloat.net> On Behalf Of
> David Lang via Starlink
> > Sent: Friday, October 14, 2022 1:28 PM
> > To: Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl@cs.washington.edu>
> > Cc: Starlink list <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
> > Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian
> army?
> >
> > Having now read more info on this, less significant than the $80m total
> figure is the $20m/month figure he quoted. With 15k dishes as the figure
> that they sent (separate from whatever has been purchased on the commercial
> side), that works out to 1.3k/dish/month, which is very high.
> >
> > now, not being able to deploy reliable ground stations inside Ukraine
> could be driving up costs, plus the ongoing battle against jamming. But in
> his tweet he also cites satellite costs, which should not be allocated as
> "Ukraine related"
> > costs (and I don't think the cyberdefense and jamming defense work
> should be
> > either)
> >
> > David Lang
> >
> > On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Kurtis Heimerl via Starlink wrote:
> >
> >> This thread (https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456)
> >> strongly argues that Starlink is largely paid for their service, at
> >> least on the consumer side. I imagine there are significant
> >> operational expenses in dealing with the various actors involved but
> >> not on the basic model.
> >>
> >> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 9:06 AM Juliusz Chroboczek via Starlink
> >> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> In essence, once you give something away for free, not even setting
> >>>> the expectation that it’s a “freemium” model, it’s very hard to get
> >>>> out of it. If you then claim your costs are way higher than what
> >>>> analysis work out, eyebrows raise way above the hairline.
> >>>
> >>> Uh.  Hmm.
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Starlink mailing list
> >>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> >>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Starlink mailing list
> >> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> >> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
-- 
Steve Stroh N8GNJ (he / him / his)
Editor
Zero Retries Newsletter - https://zeroretries.substack.com

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

[Dave Taht]

On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 10:31 AM Steve Stroh via Starlink
<starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
> On the battlefield, high power continuous jamming such as you describe tends not to last very long. There are special missiles (HARM - High speed AntiRadiation Missile) to remedy that situation. They home in on a jamming transmitter like a beacon.
>
> One of the stellar attributes about Starlink is that it’s using phased array antennas on both user terminals and satellites, proving a “tight beam”. I’m speculating, but my guess is that clever programming is configuring the satellite beams to be contoured to ignore contested areas where jamming is being attempted. An additional speculation is that Starlink is programming both the satellites and user terminals to continuously authenticate each other’s transmission, allowing them to ignore spoofing attempts.

You also don't have to locate them at the front. People seem to have
forgotten that it's just a networking technology. You could expend
even something as ancient as a nanostation M5 radio (which used to
have 50km of range), for a directional link to a starlink, or use
something in the 900mhz or even 430 mhz spectrum, which have better
terrain following properties.

You can hook up a nearly unlimited number of natted radios to a given
starlink terminal and also have 5g backup and a variety of other tech
to make it meshier and more reliable. In the openwrt world we have the
babel routing protocol
which among many other things, allows you to use up just /64 creatively.

These 60ghz radios, although lousy in rain, were pretty good too.

https://forum.openwrt.org/t/openwrt-on-the-ubnt-af60-xg-af60-hd/139511

>
> Not to mention that the directional nature of the beams allows for a positional reality check. If a terminal is attempted to be used by the enemy and the terminal’s internal GPS is spoofed to say it’s well within Ukraine (good guy territory) rather than its real location outside Ukraine (bad guy territory), the satellite can discern that a terminal really isn’t where it’s reporting it is, and that terminal gets (permanently?) deauthorized.
>
> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 13:45 Mike Puchol via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>
>> Pumping out RF at fairly high power levels, and pointing an antenna at a satellite, are both things very easy to do for someone like Russia. To then jam 500 MHz of spectrum all at once is not that trivial, and one can get creative, eg by only attacking the reference subcarriers in OFDM, thus concentrating RF power on those, rather than the whole channel.
>>
>> There are some papers written around jamming LTE by attacking specific resources instead of the whole band, making the attack less conspicuous, something similar could be applied against Starlink. By not using brute force, you also make the attack harder to detect and counter.
>>
>> My view is that Russia is not worried about being noticed, and just applies brute force.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Mike
>> On Oct 14, 2022 at 20:26 +0200, Juliusz Chroboczek <jch@irif.fr>, wrote:
>>
>> Juliusz, see the Twitter thread I linked to, it explains precisely the
>> jamming scenarios they could be facing, and how they are possible.
>>
>>
>> I saw it after I wrote my question, and it does explain a lot. Thanks.
>>
>> Do you have an idea how difficult it is to actually do in practice? Is it
>> a simple matter of plugging a second-hand VSAT dish to an old amateur
>> radio rig, or do you actually need to be a research lab of the Moscow
>> Academy of Sciences to do it?
>>
>> -- Juliusz
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
> --
> Steve Stroh N8GNJ (he / him / his)
> Editor
> Zero Retries Newsletter - https://zeroretries.substack.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink



-- 
This song goes out to all the folk that thought Stadia would work:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dtaht_the-mushroom-song-activity-6981366665607352320-FXtz
Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC

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

[Nathan Owens]

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Elon posted a graph, it showed a peak of 7000GB per unit time, the only one
that makes sense to me is per hour, which is 15Gbps peak -- not a huge
amount.

On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 10:50 AM Steve Stroh via Starlink <
starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:

> I’m speculating, but given that Starlink is THE communications
> infrastructure for much of Ukraine, then the scaling of the ground stations
> to provide that level of service must be a significant expense. To provide
> that much bandwidth would require deploying a lot of ground stations, each
> with expensive hardware, power infrastructure (including backup), fiber
> backhaul, skilled labor, and no small amount of fiber bandwidth that SpaceX
> has to pay SOMEONE to provide.
>
> Not to mention that anything SpaceX deploys to support Ukraine is a
> resource that it could have used for speeding up revenue generation in
> lucrative markets like the US.
>
> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 12:41 David Lang via Starlink <
> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
>> If spacex is providing the high-end/business grade service to all
>> terminals
>> that they normally charge $4500/month for, reimbursement should be based
>> on
>> that.
>>
>> Base it on the normal service pricing, not on cost-plus (if it were based
>> on
>> cost-plus it would be an utter windfall for SpaceX as they are still in
>> the
>> stage of building the service, and so there is a much higher spend rate
>> to
>> expand the service at this point than the ongoing maintinance of it)
>>
>> while the satellites do support that area, they also support the rest of
>> the
>> service, and if they weren't supporting Ukraine, there wouldn't be any
>> fewer
>> satellites launched.
>>
>> I've seen too many games played with 'fully loaded costs' (sometimes
>> backfiring
>> on the people tinkering with the numbers), and so it's something I watch
>> out
>> for.
>>
>> lies, damn lies, and statistics, 'fully loaded costs' tend to be heavy on
>> statistics ;-)
>>
>> David Lang
>>
>> On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, tom@evslin.com wrote:
>>
>> > Putting aside the timing of Elon's complaint about cost right after the
>> spat over his Ukrainian "peace plan", It is certainly reasonable for
>> Starlink to get paid like other weapon suppliers who didn't give out free
>> samples to prove their usefulness, Given that they should be reimbursed
>> based on loaded cost plus profit like anyone else. I'm sure the other
>> suppliers allocate their overhead costs when pricing weapon systems. They'd
>> be out of business otherwise. The satellites are part of Starlink's fixed
>> overhead so a portion of their costs should be allocated to service
>> provided in Ukraine.
>> >
>> > All that being said, it would be terrible if Ukraine got less than the
>> best support that can be provided.
>> >
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> > From: Starlink <starlink-bounces@lists.bufferbloat.net> On Behalf Of
>> David Lang via Starlink
>> > Sent: Friday, October 14, 2022 1:28 PM
>> > To: Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl@cs.washington.edu>
>> > Cc: Starlink list <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
>> > Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian
>> army?
>> >
>> > Having now read more info on this, less significant than the $80m total
>> figure is the $20m/month figure he quoted. With 15k dishes as the figure
>> that they sent (separate from whatever has been purchased on the commercial
>> side), that works out to 1.3k/dish/month, which is very high.
>> >
>> > now, not being able to deploy reliable ground stations inside Ukraine
>> could be driving up costs, plus the ongoing battle against jamming. But in
>> his tweet he also cites satellite costs, which should not be allocated as
>> "Ukraine related"
>> > costs (and I don't think the cyberdefense and jamming defense work
>> should be
>> > either)
>> >
>> > David Lang
>> >
>> > On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Kurtis Heimerl via Starlink wrote:
>> >
>> >> This thread (https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456)
>> >> strongly argues that Starlink is largely paid for their service, at
>> >> least on the consumer side. I imagine there are significant
>> >> operational expenses in dealing with the various actors involved but
>> >> not on the basic model.
>> >>
>> >> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 9:06 AM Juliusz Chroboczek via Starlink
>> >> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>>> In essence, once you give something away for free, not even setting
>> >>>> the expectation that it’s a “freemium” model, it’s very hard to get
>> >>>> out of it. If you then claim your costs are way higher than what
>> >>>> analysis work out, eyebrows raise way above the hairline.
>> >>>
>> >>> Uh.  Hmm.
>> >>> _______________________________________________
>> >>> Starlink mailing list
>> >>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> >>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>> >> _______________________________________________
>> >> Starlink mailing list
>> >> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> >> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>> >
>> >_______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>
> --
> Steve Stroh N8GNJ (he / him / his)
> Editor
> Zero Retries Newsletter - https://zeroretries.substack.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>

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

[Dave Taht]

On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 10:57 AM Nathan Owens via Starlink
<starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
> Elon posted a graph, it showed a peak of 7000GB per unit time, the only one that makes sense to me is per hour, which is 15Gbps peak -- not a huge amount.

You really don't need much data for C&C traffic. You do need a fairly
reliable uplink, but the observed jitter on an otherwise idle link was
in the few ms range.

GPSD has a udp output mode, too.

(btw, to my knowledge, starlink has not enabled any network interfaces
to the outside to their internal on-dish gps chip, which
 when I was whinging about it, would provide perfect time to
downstream clients, either natively or via ntp)

It's one very short message, per second.

>
> On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 10:50 AM Steve Stroh via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>
>> I’m speculating, but given that Starlink is THE communications infrastructure for much of Ukraine, then the scaling of the ground stations to provide that level of service must be a significant expense. To provide that much bandwidth would require deploying a lot of ground stations, each with expensive hardware, power infrastructure (including backup), fiber backhaul, skilled labor, and no small amount of fiber bandwidth that SpaceX has to pay SOMEONE to provide.
>>
>> Not to mention that anything SpaceX deploys to support Ukraine is a resource that it could have used for speeding up revenue generation in lucrative markets like the US.
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 12:41 David Lang via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> If spacex is providing the high-end/business grade service to all terminals
>>> that they normally charge $4500/month for, reimbursement should be based on
>>> that.
>>>
>>> Base it on the normal service pricing, not on cost-plus (if it were based on
>>> cost-plus it would be an utter windfall for SpaceX as they are still in the
>>> stage of building the service, and so there is a much higher spend rate to
>>> expand the service at this point than the ongoing maintinance of it)
>>>
>>> while the satellites do support that area, they also support the rest of the
>>> service, and if they weren't supporting Ukraine, there wouldn't be any fewer
>>> satellites launched.
>>>
>>> I've seen too many games played with 'fully loaded costs' (sometimes backfiring
>>> on the people tinkering with the numbers), and so it's something I watch out
>>> for.
>>>
>>> lies, damn lies, and statistics, 'fully loaded costs' tend to be heavy on
>>> statistics ;-)
>>>
>>> David Lang
>>>
>>> On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, tom@evslin.com wrote:
>>>
>>> > Putting aside the timing of Elon's complaint about cost right after the spat over his Ukrainian "peace plan", It is certainly reasonable for Starlink to get paid like other weapon suppliers who didn't give out free samples to prove their usefulness, Given that they should be reimbursed based on loaded cost plus profit like anyone else. I'm sure the other suppliers allocate their overhead costs when pricing weapon systems. They'd be out of business otherwise. The satellites are part of Starlink's fixed overhead so a portion of their costs should be allocated to service provided in Ukraine.
>>> >
>>> > All that being said, it would be terrible if Ukraine got less than the best support that can be provided.
>>> >
>>> > -----Original Message-----
>>> > From: Starlink <starlink-bounces@lists.bufferbloat.net> On Behalf Of David Lang via Starlink
>>> > Sent: Friday, October 14, 2022 1:28 PM
>>> > To: Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl@cs.washington.edu>
>>> > Cc: Starlink list <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
>>> > Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian army?
>>> >
>>> > Having now read more info on this, less significant than the $80m total figure is the $20m/month figure he quoted. With 15k dishes as the figure that they sent (separate from whatever has been purchased on the commercial side), that works out to 1.3k/dish/month, which is very high.
>>> >
>>> > now, not being able to deploy reliable ground stations inside Ukraine could be driving up costs, plus the ongoing battle against jamming. But in his tweet he also cites satellite costs, which should not be allocated as "Ukraine related"
>>> > costs (and I don't think the cyberdefense and jamming defense work should be
>>> > either)
>>> >
>>> > David Lang
>>> >
>>> > On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Kurtis Heimerl via Starlink wrote:
>>> >
>>> >> This thread (https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456)
>>> >> strongly argues that Starlink is largely paid for their service, at
>>> >> least on the consumer side. I imagine there are significant
>>> >> operational expenses in dealing with the various actors involved but
>>> >> not on the basic model.
>>> >>
>>> >> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 9:06 AM Juliusz Chroboczek via Starlink
>>> >> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>> >>>
>>> >>>> In essence, once you give something away for free, not even setting
>>> >>>> the expectation that it’s a “freemium” model, it’s very hard to get
>>> >>>> out of it. If you then claim your costs are way higher than what
>>> >>>> analysis work out, eyebrows raise way above the hairline.
>>> >>>
>>> >>> Uh.  Hmm.
>>> >>> _______________________________________________
>>> >>> Starlink mailing list
>>> >>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> >>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>> >> _______________________________________________
>>> >> Starlink mailing list
>>> >> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> >> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>> >
>>> >_______________________________________________
>>> Starlink mailing list
>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>
>> --
>> Steve Stroh N8GNJ (he / him / his)
>> Editor
>> Zero Retries Newsletter - https://zeroretries.substack.com
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink



-- 
This song goes out to all the folk that thought Stadia would work:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dtaht_the-mushroom-song-activity-6981366665607352320-FXtz
Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC

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

[Vint Cerf]

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On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 1:31 PM Steve Stroh via Starlink <
starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:

> On the battlefield, high power continuous jamming such as you describe
> tends not to last very long. There are special missiles (HARM - High speed
> AntiRadiation Missile) to remedy that situation. They home in on a jamming
> transmitter like a beacon.
>
this is called "ballistic anti-jam" :-))))

>
> One of the stellar attributes about Starlink is that it’s using phased
> array antennas on both user terminals and satellites, proving a “tight
> beam”. I’m speculating, but my guess is that clever programming is
> configuring the satellite beams to be contoured to ignore contested areas
> where jamming is being attempted. An additional speculation is that
> Starlink is programming both the satellites and user terminals to
> continuously authenticate each other’s transmission, allowing them to
> ignore spoofing attempts.
>
> Not to mention that the directional nature of the beams allows for a
> positional reality check. If a terminal is attempted to be used by the
> enemy and the terminal’s internal GPS is spoofed to say it’s well within
> Ukraine (good guy territory) rather than its real location outside Ukraine
> (bad guy territory), the satellite can discern that a terminal really isn’t
> where it’s reporting it is, and that terminal gets (permanently?)
> deauthorized.
>
> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 13:45 Mike Puchol via Starlink <
> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
>> Pumping out RF at fairly high power levels, and pointing an antenna at a
>> satellite, are both things very easy to do for someone like Russia. To then
>> jam 500 MHz of spectrum all at once is not that trivial, and one can get
>> creative, eg by only attacking the reference subcarriers in OFDM, thus
>> concentrating RF power on those, rather than the whole channel.
>>
>> There are some papers written around jamming LTE by attacking specific
>> resources instead of the whole band, making the attack less conspicuous,
>> something similar could be applied against Starlink. By not using brute
>> force, you also make the attack harder to detect and counter.
>>
>> My view is that Russia is not worried about being noticed, and just
>> applies brute force.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Mike
>> On Oct 14, 2022 at 20:26 +0200, Juliusz Chroboczek <jch@irif.fr>, wrote:
>>
>> Juliusz, see the Twitter thread I linked to, it explains precisely the
>> jamming scenarios they could be facing, and how they are possible.
>>
>>
>> I saw it after I wrote my question, and it does explain a lot. Thanks.
>>
>> Do you have an idea how difficult it is to actually do in practice? Is it
>> a simple matter of plugging a second-hand VSAT dish to an old amateur
>> radio rig, or do you actually need to be a research lab of the Moscow
>> Academy of Sciences to do it?
>>
>> -- Juliusz
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>
> --
> Steve Stroh N8GNJ (he / him / his)
> Editor
> Zero Retries Newsletter - https://zeroretries.substack.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>


-- 
Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to:
Vint Cerf
Google, LLC
1900 Reston Metro Plaza, 16th Floor
Reston, VA 20190
+1 (571) 213 1346


until further notice

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

[Vint Cerf]

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if you need real-time for video and control, that can add up ...

v


On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 2:01 PM Dave Taht via Starlink <
starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 10:57 AM Nathan Owens via Starlink
> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> >
> > Elon posted a graph, it showed a peak of 7000GB per unit time, the only
> one that makes sense to me is per hour, which is 15Gbps peak -- not a huge
> amount.
>
> You really don't need much data for C&C traffic. You do need a fairly
> reliable uplink, but the observed jitter on an otherwise idle link was
> in the few ms range.
>
> GPSD has a udp output mode, too.
>
> (btw, to my knowledge, starlink has not enabled any network interfaces
> to the outside to their internal on-dish gps chip, which
>  when I was whinging about it, would provide perfect time to
> downstream clients, either natively or via ntp)
>
> It's one very short message, per second.
>
> >
> > On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 10:50 AM Steve Stroh via Starlink <
> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> I’m speculating, but given that Starlink is THE communications
> infrastructure for much of Ukraine, then the scaling of the ground stations
> to provide that level of service must be a significant expense. To provide
> that much bandwidth would require deploying a lot of ground stations, each
> with expensive hardware, power infrastructure (including backup), fiber
> backhaul, skilled labor, and no small amount of fiber bandwidth that SpaceX
> has to pay SOMEONE to provide.
> >>
> >> Not to mention that anything SpaceX deploys to support Ukraine is a
> resource that it could have used for speeding up revenue generation in
> lucrative markets like the US.
> >>
> >> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 12:41 David Lang via Starlink <
> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> If spacex is providing the high-end/business grade service to all
> terminals
> >>> that they normally charge $4500/month for, reimbursement should be
> based on
> >>> that.
> >>>
> >>> Base it on the normal service pricing, not on cost-plus (if it were
> based on
> >>> cost-plus it would be an utter windfall for SpaceX as they are still
> in the
> >>> stage of building the service, and so there is a much higher spend
> rate to
> >>> expand the service at this point than the ongoing maintinance of it)
> >>>
> >>> while the satellites do support that area, they also support the rest
> of the
> >>> service, and if they weren't supporting Ukraine, there wouldn't be any
> fewer
> >>> satellites launched.
> >>>
> >>> I've seen too many games played with 'fully loaded costs' (sometimes
> backfiring
> >>> on the people tinkering with the numbers), and so it's something I
> watch out
> >>> for.
> >>>
> >>> lies, damn lies, and statistics, 'fully loaded costs' tend to be heavy
> on
> >>> statistics ;-)
> >>>
> >>> David Lang
> >>>
> >>> On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, tom@evslin.com wrote:
> >>>
> >>> > Putting aside the timing of Elon's complaint about cost right after
> the spat over his Ukrainian "peace plan", It is certainly reasonable for
> Starlink to get paid like other weapon suppliers who didn't give out free
> samples to prove their usefulness, Given that they should be reimbursed
> based on loaded cost plus profit like anyone else. I'm sure the other
> suppliers allocate their overhead costs when pricing weapon systems. They'd
> be out of business otherwise. The satellites are part of Starlink's fixed
> overhead so a portion of their costs should be allocated to service
> provided in Ukraine.
> >>> >
> >>> > All that being said, it would be terrible if Ukraine got less than
> the best support that can be provided.
> >>> >
> >>> > -----Original Message-----
> >>> > From: Starlink <starlink-bounces@lists.bufferbloat.net> On Behalf
> Of David Lang via Starlink
> >>> > Sent: Friday, October 14, 2022 1:28 PM
> >>> > To: Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl@cs.washington.edu>
> >>> > Cc: Starlink list <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
> >>> > Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the
> Ukrainian army?
> >>> >
> >>> > Having now read more info on this, less significant than the $80m
> total figure is the $20m/month figure he quoted. With 15k dishes as the
> figure that they sent (separate from whatever has been purchased on the
> commercial side), that works out to 1.3k/dish/month, which is very high.
> >>> >
> >>> > now, not being able to deploy reliable ground stations inside
> Ukraine could be driving up costs, plus the ongoing battle against jamming.
> But in his tweet he also cites satellite costs, which should not be
> allocated as "Ukraine related"
> >>> > costs (and I don't think the cyberdefense and jamming defense work
> should be
> >>> > either)
> >>> >
> >>> > David Lang
> >>> >
> >>> > On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Kurtis Heimerl via Starlink wrote:
> >>> >
> >>> >> This thread (https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456)
> >>> >> strongly argues that Starlink is largely paid for their service, at
> >>> >> least on the consumer side. I imagine there are significant
> >>> >> operational expenses in dealing with the various actors involved but
> >>> >> not on the basic model.
> >>> >>
> >>> >> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 9:06 AM Juliusz Chroboczek via Starlink
> >>> >> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> >>> >>>
> >>> >>>> In essence, once you give something away for free, not even
> setting
> >>> >>>> the expectation that it’s a “freemium” model, it’s very hard to
> get
> >>> >>>> out of it. If you then claim your costs are way higher than what
> >>> >>>> analysis work out, eyebrows raise way above the hairline.
> >>> >>>
> >>> >>> Uh.  Hmm.
> >>> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> >>> Starlink mailing list
> >>> >>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> >>> >>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> >>> >> _______________________________________________
> >>> >> Starlink mailing list
> >>> >> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> >>> >> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> >>> >
> >>> >_______________________________________________
> >>> Starlink mailing list
> >>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> >>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> >>
> >> --
> >> Steve Stroh N8GNJ (he / him / his)
> >> Editor
> >> Zero Retries Newsletter - https://zeroretries.substack.com
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Starlink mailing list
> >> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> >> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Starlink mailing list
> > Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>
>
>
> --
> This song goes out to all the folk that thought Stadia would work:
>
> https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dtaht_the-mushroom-song-activity-6981366665607352320-FXtz
> Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>


-- 
Please send any postal/overnight deliveries to:
Vint Cerf
Google, LLC
1900 Reston Metro Plaza, 16th Floor
Reston, VA 20190
+1 (571) 213 1346


until further notice

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

[David Lang]

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and it's worth remembering that it's not just being used for military C&C, it's 
being used for (almost) all Internet access through the country, normal telcom, 
Hospitals, community access, etc.

That will add up to a lot (and the 7TB of use was also back in May)

David Lang

On Sun, 16 Oct 2022, Vint Cerf via Starlink wrote:

> if you need real-time for video and control, that can add up ...
>
> v
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 2:01 PM Dave Taht via Starlink <
> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 10:57 AM Nathan Owens via Starlink
>> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> Elon posted a graph, it showed a peak of 7000GB per unit time, the only
>> one that makes sense to me is per hour, which is 15Gbps peak -- not a huge
>> amount.
>>
>> You really don't need much data for C&C traffic. You do need a fairly
>> reliable uplink, but the observed jitter on an otherwise idle link was
>> in the few ms range.
>>
>> GPSD has a udp output mode, too.
>>
>> (btw, to my knowledge, starlink has not enabled any network interfaces
>> to the outside to their internal on-dish gps chip, which
>>  when I was whinging about it, would provide perfect time to
>> downstream clients, either natively or via ntp)
>>
>> It's one very short message, per second.
>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 10:50 AM Steve Stroh via Starlink <
>> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I’m speculating, but given that Starlink is THE communications
>> infrastructure for much of Ukraine, then the scaling of the ground stations
>> to provide that level of service must be a significant expense. To provide
>> that much bandwidth would require deploying a lot of ground stations, each
>> with expensive hardware, power infrastructure (including backup), fiber
>> backhaul, skilled labor, and no small amount of fiber bandwidth that SpaceX
>> has to pay SOMEONE to provide.
>>>>
>>>> Not to mention that anything SpaceX deploys to support Ukraine is a
>> resource that it could have used for speeding up revenue generation in
>> lucrative markets like the US.
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 12:41 David Lang via Starlink <
>> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> If spacex is providing the high-end/business grade service to all
>> terminals
>>>>> that they normally charge $4500/month for, reimbursement should be
>> based on
>>>>> that.
>>>>>
>>>>> Base it on the normal service pricing, not on cost-plus (if it were
>> based on
>>>>> cost-plus it would be an utter windfall for SpaceX as they are still
>> in the
>>>>> stage of building the service, and so there is a much higher spend
>> rate to
>>>>> expand the service at this point than the ongoing maintinance of it)
>>>>>
>>>>> while the satellites do support that area, they also support the rest
>> of the
>>>>> service, and if they weren't supporting Ukraine, there wouldn't be any
>> fewer
>>>>> satellites launched.
>>>>>
>>>>> I've seen too many games played with 'fully loaded costs' (sometimes
>> backfiring
>>>>> on the people tinkering with the numbers), and so it's something I
>> watch out
>>>>> for.
>>>>>
>>>>> lies, damn lies, and statistics, 'fully loaded costs' tend to be heavy
>> on
>>>>> statistics ;-)
>>>>>
>>>>> David Lang
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, tom@evslin.com wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Putting aside the timing of Elon's complaint about cost right after
>> the spat over his Ukrainian "peace plan", It is certainly reasonable for
>> Starlink to get paid like other weapon suppliers who didn't give out free
>> samples to prove their usefulness, Given that they should be reimbursed
>> based on loaded cost plus profit like anyone else. I'm sure the other
>> suppliers allocate their overhead costs when pricing weapon systems. They'd
>> be out of business otherwise. The satellites are part of Starlink's fixed
>> overhead so a portion of their costs should be allocated to service
>> provided in Ukraine.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> All that being said, it would be terrible if Ukraine got less than
>> the best support that can be provided.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>>> From: Starlink <starlink-bounces@lists.bufferbloat.net> On Behalf
>> Of David Lang via Starlink
>>>>>> Sent: Friday, October 14, 2022 1:28 PM
>>>>>> To: Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl@cs.washington.edu>
>>>>>> Cc: Starlink list <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
>>>>>> Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the
>> Ukrainian army?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Having now read more info on this, less significant than the $80m
>> total figure is the $20m/month figure he quoted. With 15k dishes as the
>> figure that they sent (separate from whatever has been purchased on the
>> commercial side), that works out to 1.3k/dish/month, which is very high.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> now, not being able to deploy reliable ground stations inside
>> Ukraine could be driving up costs, plus the ongoing battle against jamming.
>> But in his tweet he also cites satellite costs, which should not be
>> allocated as "Ukraine related"
>>>>>> costs (and I don't think the cyberdefense and jamming defense work
>> should be
>>>>>> either)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> David Lang
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Kurtis Heimerl via Starlink wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> This thread (https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456)
>>>>>>> strongly argues that Starlink is largely paid for their service, at
>>>>>>> least on the consumer side. I imagine there are significant
>>>>>>> operational expenses in dealing with the various actors involved but
>>>>>>> not on the basic model.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 9:06 AM Juliusz Chroboczek via Starlink
>>>>>>> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> In essence, once you give something away for free, not even
>> setting
>>>>>>>>> the expectation that it’s a “freemium” model, it’s very hard to
>> get
>>>>>>>>> out of it. If you then claim your costs are way higher than what
>>>>>>>>> analysis work out, eyebrows raise way above the hairline.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Uh.  Hmm.
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>> Starlink mailing list
>>>>>>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> Starlink mailing list
>>>>>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Starlink mailing list
>>>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Steve Stroh N8GNJ (he / him / his)
>>>> Editor
>>>> Zero Retries Newsletter - https://zeroretries.substack.com
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Starlink mailing list
>>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Starlink mailing list
>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> This song goes out to all the folk that thought Stadia would work:
>>
>> https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dtaht_the-mushroom-song-activity-6981366665607352320-FXtz
>> Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC
>> _______________________________________________
>> Starlink mailing list
>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>
>
>
>

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

[Sebastian Moeller]

Hi David,

> On Oct 16, 2022, at 20:33, David Lang via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> 
> and it's worth remembering that it's not just being used for military C&C, it's being used for (almost) all Internet access through the country, normal telcom, Hospitals, community access, etc.

	Do we know this for sure? As far as I know (so not very much, one of my colleagues in the early 2000s was Ukranian and told me about their figer optics telephony system) Ukraine might have some fiber infrastructure that should make at least the west not fully reliant on Starlkink.

Regards
	Srbastian


> 
> That will add up to a lot (and the 7TB of use was also back in May)
> 
> David Lang
> 
> On Sun, 16 Oct 2022, Vint Cerf via Starlink wrote:
> 
>> if you need real-time for video and control, that can add up ...
>> 
>> v
>> 
>> 
>> On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 2:01 PM Dave Taht via Starlink <
>> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 10:57 AM Nathan Owens via Starlink
>>> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Elon posted a graph, it showed a peak of 7000GB per unit time, the only
>>> one that makes sense to me is per hour, which is 15Gbps peak -- not a huge
>>> amount.
>>> 
>>> You really don't need much data for C&C traffic. You do need a fairly
>>> reliable uplink, but the observed jitter on an otherwise idle link was
>>> in the few ms range.
>>> 
>>> GPSD has a udp output mode, too.
>>> 
>>> (btw, to my knowledge, starlink has not enabled any network interfaces
>>> to the outside to their internal on-dish gps chip, which
>>> when I was whinging about it, would provide perfect time to
>>> downstream clients, either natively or via ntp)
>>> 
>>> It's one very short message, per second.
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 10:50 AM Steve Stroh via Starlink <
>>> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> I’m speculating, but given that Starlink is THE communications
>>> infrastructure for much of Ukraine, then the scaling of the ground stations
>>> to provide that level of service must be a significant expense. To provide
>>> that much bandwidth would require deploying a lot of ground stations, each
>>> with expensive hardware, power infrastructure (including backup), fiber
>>> backhaul, skilled labor, and no small amount of fiber bandwidth that SpaceX
>>> has to pay SOMEONE to provide.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Not to mention that anything SpaceX deploys to support Ukraine is a
>>> resource that it could have used for speeding up revenue generation in
>>> lucrative markets like the US.
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 12:41 David Lang via Starlink <
>>> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> If spacex is providing the high-end/business grade service to all
>>> terminals
>>>>>> that they normally charge $4500/month for, reimbursement should be
>>> based on
>>>>>> that.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Base it on the normal service pricing, not on cost-plus (if it were
>>> based on
>>>>>> cost-plus it would be an utter windfall for SpaceX as they are still
>>> in the
>>>>>> stage of building the service, and so there is a much higher spend
>>> rate to
>>>>>> expand the service at this point than the ongoing maintinance of it)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> while the satellites do support that area, they also support the rest
>>> of the
>>>>>> service, and if they weren't supporting Ukraine, there wouldn't be any
>>> fewer
>>>>>> satellites launched.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I've seen too many games played with 'fully loaded costs' (sometimes
>>> backfiring
>>>>>> on the people tinkering with the numbers), and so it's something I
>>> watch out
>>>>>> for.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> lies, damn lies, and statistics, 'fully loaded costs' tend to be heavy
>>> on
>>>>>> statistics ;-)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> David Lang
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, tom@evslin.com wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Putting aside the timing of Elon's complaint about cost right after
>>> the spat over his Ukrainian "peace plan", It is certainly reasonable for
>>> Starlink to get paid like other weapon suppliers who didn't give out free
>>> samples to prove their usefulness, Given that they should be reimbursed
>>> based on loaded cost plus profit like anyone else. I'm sure the other
>>> suppliers allocate their overhead costs when pricing weapon systems. They'd
>>> be out of business otherwise. The satellites are part of Starlink's fixed
>>> overhead so a portion of their costs should be allocated to service
>>> provided in Ukraine.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> All that being said, it would be terrible if Ukraine got less than
>>> the best support that can be provided.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>>>> From: Starlink <starlink-bounces@lists.bufferbloat.net> On Behalf
>>> Of David Lang via Starlink
>>>>>>> Sent: Friday, October 14, 2022 1:28 PM
>>>>>>> To: Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl@cs.washington.edu>
>>>>>>> Cc: Starlink list <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
>>>>>>> Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the
>>> Ukrainian army?
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Having now read more info on this, less significant than the $80m
>>> total figure is the $20m/month figure he quoted. With 15k dishes as the
>>> figure that they sent (separate from whatever has been purchased on the
>>> commercial side), that works out to 1.3k/dish/month, which is very high.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> now, not being able to deploy reliable ground stations inside
>>> Ukraine could be driving up costs, plus the ongoing battle against jamming.
>>> But in his tweet he also cites satellite costs, which should not be
>>> allocated as "Ukraine related"
>>>>>>> costs (and I don't think the cyberdefense and jamming defense work
>>> should be
>>>>>>> either)
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> David Lang
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Kurtis Heimerl via Starlink wrote:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> This thread (https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456)
>>>>>>>> strongly argues that Starlink is largely paid for their service, at
>>>>>>>> least on the consumer side. I imagine there are significant
>>>>>>>> operational expenses in dealing with the various actors involved but
>>>>>>>> not on the basic model.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 9:06 AM Juliusz Chroboczek via Starlink
>>>>>>>> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> In essence, once you give something away for free, not even
>>> setting
>>>>>>>>>> the expectation that it’s a “freemium” model, it’s very hard to
>>> get
>>>>>>>>>> out of it. If you then claim your costs are way higher than what
>>>>>>>>>> analysis work out, eyebrows raise way above the hairline.
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Uh.  Hmm.
>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>>> Starlink mailing list
>>>>>>>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>>>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>> Starlink mailing list
>>>>>>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Starlink mailing list
>>>>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>>>> 
>>>>> --
>>>>> Steve Stroh N8GNJ (he / him / his)
>>>>> Editor
>>>>> Zero Retries Newsletter - https://zeroretries.substack.com
>>>>> 
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Starlink mailing list
>>>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>>> 
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Starlink mailing list
>>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> This song goes out to all the folk that thought Stadia would work:
>>> 
>>> https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dtaht_the-mushroom-song-activity-6981366665607352320-FXtz
>>> Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Starlink mailing list
>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>> 
>> 
>> 
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink

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

[Brandon Butterworth]

On Sun Oct 16, 2022 at 08:44:12PM +0200, Sebastian Moeller via Starlink wrote:
> > and it's worth remembering that it's not just being used for military C&C, it's being used for (almost) all Internet access through the country, normal telcom, Hospitals, community access, etc.
> 
> Do we know this for sure? As far as I know (so not very much, one of my
> colleagues in the early 2000s was Ukranian and told me about their figer
> optics telephony system) Ukraine might have some fiber infrastructure
> that should make at least the west not fully reliant on Starlkink.

They have loads of fibre like most countries, there were many reports of
them repairing it after was damage, a few sumarried -

https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjbapv/diy-volunteers-are-repairing-ukraines-destroyed-internet-infrastructure
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2022/03/22/while-russians-bombs-fall-around-them-ukraines-engineers-battle-to-keep-the-internet-running/

loads more on twitter.

For c&c and the front line they can't depend on that especially as
they regain areas where Russia has has time to infiltrate/redeploy
the existing infrastructure, and which may now be the target of
their own attack. One of Russias weaknesses was depending on the
local infra for their own operations.

brandon

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

[Ulrich Speidel]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 4197 bytes --]

My 10 cents worth: If you divide the total annual Internet usage 
worldwide (a ballpark figure at best) by the total number of users 
worldwide (another ballpark figure) and then by 365*24*60*60, you get a 
rate of (ballpark) 1 Mb/s. b as in bits not bytes, M as in Mega not m as 
in milli (someone needs to tell Starlink that or are they promising 
people a lot less than we think: 
https://www.starlink.com/legal/documents/DOC-1002-69942-69?regionCode=US?). 
That means each Internet user generates, on average, 1 Mb/s of traffic 
on a 24/7 basis. Of course, we'd expect them to generate at little less 
off-peak and a little more during peak hours. But it's a handy rate to 
compare other numbers to.

So if you then consider the 15 Gb/s that Nathan quoted earlier on, 
that's really only about 15k users, if averaged. If it's a peak figure 
(likely if Elon shouts about it) then that's likely a lot less than 15k 
users. Now just a gentle reminder that Elon's still having trouble 
provisioning to all of Montana, and there's just over a million folk 
there. Ukraine has over 35 million - even if you take all the refugees 
that haven't returned out - and it's not orders of magnitude larger than 
Montana either.

So it's plain obvious that Starlink is not carrying most of the Internet 
traffic from/to Ukraine. Far from it. I don't think Elon has claimed 
this anywhere, either, but the fact that this claim is making it on this 
list just goes to show how effective he is at getting people's attention 
(and leaving such false impressions uncorrected). That said, it's 
probably carrying a fair amount of Ukraine's frontline unit traffic now. 
In fact, Starlink's probably exclusively mil/gov use in Ukraine right now.

Fibre seems to be what is propping up the rest - and quite effectively 
so. But not as glamorous. Who'd want to know about low power fibre laser 
diodes when you can have space lasers next year?

On 17/10/2022 8:03 am, Brandon Butterworth via Starlink wrote:
> On Sun Oct 16, 2022 at 08:44:12PM +0200, Sebastian Moeller via 
> Starlink wrote:
> > > and it's worth remembering that it's not just being used for 
> military C&C, it's being used for (almost) all Internet access through 
> the country, normal telcom, Hospitals, community access, etc.
> >
> > Do we know this for sure? As far as I know (so not very much, one of my
> > colleagues in the early 2000s was Ukranian and told me about their figer
> > optics telephony system) Ukraine might have some fiber infrastructure
> > that should make at least the west not fully reliant on Starlkink.
>
> They have loads of fibre like most countries, there were many reports of
> them repairing it after was damage, a few sumarried -
>
> https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjbapv/diy-volunteers-are-repairing-ukraines-destroyed-internet-infrastructure 
> <https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjbapv/diy-volunteers-are-repairing-ukraines-destroyed-internet-infrastructure>
> https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2022/03/22/while-russians-bombs-fall-around-them-ukraines-engineers-battle-to-keep-the-internet-running/ 
> <https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2022/03/22/while-russians-bombs-fall-around-them-ukraines-engineers-battle-to-keep-the-internet-running>
>
> loads more on twitter.
>
> For c&c and the front line they can't depend on that especially as
> they regain areas where Russia has has time to infiltrate/redeploy
> the existing infrastructure, and which may now be the target of
> their own attack. One of Russias weaknesses was depending on the
> local infra for their own operations.
>
> brandon
> _______________________________________________
> Starlink mailing list
> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink 
> <https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink>

-- 
****************************************************************
Dr. Ulrich Speidel

School of Computer Science

Room 303S.594 (City Campus)

The University of Auckland
u.speidel@auckland.ac.nz  
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~ulrich/
****************************************************************



[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 5492 bytes --]

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

[David Lang]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 8676 bytes --]

On Sun, 16 Oct 2022, Sebastian Moeller wrote:

> Hi David,
>
>> On Oct 16, 2022, at 20:33, David Lang via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>
>> and it's worth remembering that it's not just being used for military C&C, it's being used for (almost) all Internet access through the country, normal telcom, Hospitals, community access, etc.
>
> 	Do we know this for sure? As far as I know (so not very much, one of my colleagues in the early 2000s was Ukranian and told me about their figer optics telephony system) Ukraine might have some fiber infrastructure that should make at least the west not fully reliant on Starlkink.

With Russia targeting infrastructure, how well is that going to be working? 
between power outages and even a relatively small handful of exchanges hit, I 
wouldn't expect any wired infrastructure to be that reliable.

David Lang

> Regards
> 	Srbastian
>
>
>>
>> That will add up to a lot (and the 7TB of use was also back in May)
>>
>> David Lang
>>
>> On Sun, 16 Oct 2022, Vint Cerf via Starlink wrote:
>>
>>> if you need real-time for video and control, that can add up ...
>>>
>>> v
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 2:01 PM Dave Taht via Starlink <
>>> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 10:57 AM Nathan Owens via Starlink
>>>> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Elon posted a graph, it showed a peak of 7000GB per unit time, the only
>>>> one that makes sense to me is per hour, which is 15Gbps peak -- not a huge
>>>> amount.
>>>>
>>>> You really don't need much data for C&C traffic. You do need a fairly
>>>> reliable uplink, but the observed jitter on an otherwise idle link was
>>>> in the few ms range.
>>>>
>>>> GPSD has a udp output mode, too.
>>>>
>>>> (btw, to my knowledge, starlink has not enabled any network interfaces
>>>> to the outside to their internal on-dish gps chip, which
>>>> when I was whinging about it, would provide perfect time to
>>>> downstream clients, either natively or via ntp)
>>>>
>>>> It's one very short message, per second.
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 10:50 AM Steve Stroh via Starlink <
>>>> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I’m speculating, but given that Starlink is THE communications
>>>> infrastructure for much of Ukraine, then the scaling of the ground stations
>>>> to provide that level of service must be a significant expense. To provide
>>>> that much bandwidth would require deploying a lot of ground stations, each
>>>> with expensive hardware, power infrastructure (including backup), fiber
>>>> backhaul, skilled labor, and no small amount of fiber bandwidth that SpaceX
>>>> has to pay SOMEONE to provide.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Not to mention that anything SpaceX deploys to support Ukraine is a
>>>> resource that it could have used for speeding up revenue generation in
>>>> lucrative markets like the US.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 12:41 David Lang via Starlink <
>>>> starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> If spacex is providing the high-end/business grade service to all
>>>> terminals
>>>>>>> that they normally charge $4500/month for, reimbursement should be
>>>> based on
>>>>>>> that.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Base it on the normal service pricing, not on cost-plus (if it were
>>>> based on
>>>>>>> cost-plus it would be an utter windfall for SpaceX as they are still
>>>> in the
>>>>>>> stage of building the service, and so there is a much higher spend
>>>> rate to
>>>>>>> expand the service at this point than the ongoing maintinance of it)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> while the satellites do support that area, they also support the rest
>>>> of the
>>>>>>> service, and if they weren't supporting Ukraine, there wouldn't be any
>>>> fewer
>>>>>>> satellites launched.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I've seen too many games played with 'fully loaded costs' (sometimes
>>>> backfiring
>>>>>>> on the people tinkering with the numbers), and so it's something I
>>>> watch out
>>>>>>> for.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> lies, damn lies, and statistics, 'fully loaded costs' tend to be heavy
>>>> on
>>>>>>> statistics ;-)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> David Lang
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, tom@evslin.com wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Putting aside the timing of Elon's complaint about cost right after
>>>> the spat over his Ukrainian "peace plan", It is certainly reasonable for
>>>> Starlink to get paid like other weapon suppliers who didn't give out free
>>>> samples to prove their usefulness, Given that they should be reimbursed
>>>> based on loaded cost plus profit like anyone else. I'm sure the other
>>>> suppliers allocate their overhead costs when pricing weapon systems. They'd
>>>> be out of business otherwise. The satellites are part of Starlink's fixed
>>>> overhead so a portion of their costs should be allocated to service
>>>> provided in Ukraine.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> All that being said, it would be terrible if Ukraine got less than
>>>> the best support that can be provided.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>>>>> From: Starlink <starlink-bounces@lists.bufferbloat.net> On Behalf
>>>> Of David Lang via Starlink
>>>>>>>> Sent: Friday, October 14, 2022 1:28 PM
>>>>>>>> To: Kurtis Heimerl <kheimerl@cs.washington.edu>
>>>>>>>> Cc: Starlink list <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net>
>>>>>>>> Subject: Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the
>>>> Ukrainian army?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Having now read more info on this, less significant than the $80m
>>>> total figure is the $20m/month figure he quoted. With 15k dishes as the
>>>> figure that they sent (separate from whatever has been purchased on the
>>>> commercial side), that works out to 1.3k/dish/month, which is very high.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> now, not being able to deploy reliable ground stations inside
>>>> Ukraine could be driving up costs, plus the ongoing battle against jamming.
>>>> But in his tweet he also cites satellite costs, which should not be
>>>> allocated as "Ukraine related"
>>>>>>>> costs (and I don't think the cyberdefense and jamming defense work
>>>> should be
>>>>>>>> either)
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> David Lang
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Fri, 14 Oct 2022, Kurtis Heimerl via Starlink wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> This thread (https://twitter.com/dim0kq/status/1580827171903635456)
>>>>>>>>> strongly argues that Starlink is largely paid for their service, at
>>>>>>>>> least on the consumer side. I imagine there are significant
>>>>>>>>> operational expenses in dealing with the various actors involved but
>>>>>>>>> not on the basic model.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 9:06 AM Juliusz Chroboczek via Starlink
>>>>>>>>> <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> In essence, once you give something away for free, not even
>>>> setting
>>>>>>>>>>> the expectation that it’s a “freemium” model, it’s very hard to
>>>> get
>>>>>>>>>>> out of it. If you then claim your costs are way higher than what
>>>>>>>>>>> analysis work out, eyebrows raise way above the hairline.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Uh.  Hmm.
>>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>>>> Starlink mailing list
>>>>>>>>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>>>>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>>> Starlink mailing list
>>>>>>>>> Starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net
>>>>>>>>> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>> This song goes out to all the folk that thought Stadia would work:
>>>>
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Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian army?

[Brandon Butterworth]

On Sun Oct 16, 2022 at 09:31:07AM -0700, Dave Taht via Starlink wrote:
> and to a huge extent my outlook on life and the American way, is
> actually reflected by the fq_codel and cake algorithms -
> 
> " fq codel (now IETF standard RFC8290) is a uniquely ?American?
> algorithm. It's *fair*. It gives the ?little guy? - the little packet,
> the first packets in a new connection to anywhere, a little boost
> until the flow achieves parity with other flows from other sources,
> with minimal buffering. This means that all network traffic gets
> treated equally - faster. Isn?t that what you want in a network
> neutral framework? DNS, gaming traffic, voip, videoconferencing, and
> the first packets of any new flow, to anywhere, get a small boost.
> That?s it. Big flows - from anybody - from netflix to google to
> comcast - all achieve parity, with minimal delay and buffering, at a
> wide variety of real round trip times." -

Which always reminds me of the canadian approach -
https://youtu.be/0eNKVf3Qw6M?t=282

brandon

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

[Bruce Perens]

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On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 5:31 PM Dave Taht <dave.taht@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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Re: [Starlink] Starlink no longer available to the Ukrainian army?

[Michael Richardson]

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David Lang via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
    > With Russia targeting infrastructure, how well is that going to be working?
    > between power outages and even a relatively small handful of exchanges hit, I
    > wouldn't expect any wired infrastructure to be that reliable.

https://ripe84.ripe.net/archives/video/738/
https://ripe84.ripe.net/archives/video/739/

https://nogalliance.org/our-task-forces/keep-ukraine-connected/

The most needed items have been fiber splicing units, and because there are
few secure places to keep them in Ukraine, they have been trying to keep them
in Poland.  Last I heard that was a logistical challenge for the NOG Alliance.
There have also been significant VAT problems with donations from outside the
EU, even though they ultimate destination is outside the EU.


--
Michael Richardson <mcr+IETF@sandelman.ca>   . o O ( IPv6 IøT consulting )
           Sandelman Software Works Inc, Ottawa and Worldwide





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

[Bruce Perens]

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The automated splicers go for at least USD$5K. If I lived in a war zone and
my children were starving, anything I could get close to $5K for could well
be the difference between survival for my family or not. And the whole
other side doesn't exactly have respect for Ukranian property rights.

Fixed infrastructure is the wrong one for wartime. Which is why Starlink is
so important.

-- 
Bruce Perens K6BP

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

[Brandon Butterworth]

On Sun Oct 16, 2022 at 04:37:14PM -0400, Michael Richardson via Starlink wrote:
> David Lang via Starlink <starlink@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>     > With Russia targeting infrastructure, how well is that going to be working?

They Russians were leaving the comms infrastructure mostly intact as they
depended on it themselves (initially, more has been targeted as it has
carried on), and a large part of the country has not been conquerred so
only parts damaged leaving a route to major connectivity and repair as
much as they can

> https://ripe84.ripe.net/archives/video/739/
> https://nogalliance.org/our-task-forces/keep-ukraine-connected/

I put a more recent version of that talk on -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz4FEF5Y0wg

brandon

[Starlink] 25 years of open source - where we went wrong, and how to fix it

[Dave Taht]

Since we are coming up on the 25th anniversary of open source, it's
been weighing on my mind a lot, particularly in time of war both
physical and economic.

This think piece by dan geer just went by...

https://www.lawfareblog.com/should-uncle-sam-worry-about-foreign-open-source-software-geographic-known-unknowns-and-open-source

If somehow we could gather together all the pioneers of the transition
between free software and "open source", and ask them - what's gone
wrong in the last 25 years, and how to fix it, perhaps we'd see a
brighter future than we do today.

For me, I pin the first place where things went wrong with the failure
of redhat's attempt to reward all its FOSS contributors with stock at
the IPO price to become custom for other IPOs in the last 24 years.
How much better would it have been for all of those contributing to
have seen some ongoing reward for shoveling their best efforts into
the commons? Especially the weird, wild ones, whose special skills are
underappreciated, and business and personal sense of preservation
lacking.

I remember how good I felt then to have been a part of this sea change
in software development.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB934482235810277867

And how burdened I feel now with contributing - and especially
maintaining - a thing, under any license. Perhaps an idea like
redhat's will make a comeback.

The second place where things have gone wrong is that "open" has gone
orwellian, and "open source processes", too often not followed. The
world is now full of "open source", that doesn't have a tight feedback
loop and regular contributors - a goodly portion of Apple's OS is
"open source", but is published a year after it ships. "Open Source"
orgs like prplfoundation, rdk-b, and the telecom-infrastructure
project require financial hurdles to enter- and the "management stack"
is pay to play, as in linux foundation and so many other vendor
sponsored orgs. I'm happy to see that starlink did a GPL dump of their
router, but it was unbuildable, and has garnered no contributors due
to the software locks on the product.

I'm sure others can think of other things that have gone awry... and
hopefully, suggest ways in some forum wider than this, to fix them.

"Ubiquity, like great power, requires of us great responsibility. It
changes our duties, and it changes the kind of people we have to be to
meet those duties. It is no longer enough for hackers to think like
explorers and artists and revolutionaries; now we have to be civil
engineers as well, and identify with the people who keep the sewers
unclogged and the electrical grid humming and the roads mended.
Creativity was never enough by itself, it always had to be backed up
with craftsmanship and care – but now, our standards of craftsmanship
and care must rise to new levels because the consequences of failure
are so much more grave." - http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4196

On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 1:25 PM Bruce Perens <bruce@perens.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 16, 2022 at 5:31 PM Dave Taht <dave.taht@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.

My top post was spawned by you saying this and thinking about it too long.


-- 
This song goes out to all the folk that thought Stadia would work:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dtaht_the-mushroom-song-activity-6981366665607352320-FXtz
Dave Täht CEO, TekLibre, LLC