No, I keep pointing out how you’re cherry-picking how conservatives are good.

Progressives say, “We live in a society, so let’s not harm each other.” Conservatives say, “Do what I want, not what you want, or society will crumble.” Take a look at all the morality laws, and try to find even two where the ultimate result isn’t punishment for daring to live in a manner they don’t agree with. And the overwhelming majority of those morality laws are passed by conservatives. Even libertarians complain if someone has the audacity to tax them for the roads they use, especially the ones they use indirectly.

Even when the laws are for good reasons, control is applied. Do you not see how unnecessary regulatory burden can be used as a tool for gatekeeping? As for environmental laws, it’s a bit audacious to talk about Nixon given what Trump has done in the last couple months. Who in their right mind (who isn’t profiting from the sale of coal) wants to keep coal plants that operate at a loss around, whether you believe in climate change or not?

And you think conservatives are genuinely trying to pass these other laws for the good of society and not for control?

Well, you are taking the excuse given at face value. Do you also think laws for back doors in encryption systems are to protect the children?

Does your apartment have a garage? No? Then what does this add to the conversation?

The big thing I see in my mom is she grew up with almost nothing, and all this stuff keeps her a little further from ever being in that situation again. I get it, but it isn’t a healthy way to deal with that fear, and you’d be better off saving the money instead. But she doesn’t trust banks, so that’s another negative. 🤷‍♂️

Yeah, i saw that note later. I can wait.

I’m kind of curious. Is the Quest 3 actually profitable, or is it a loss leader? If it’s the latter, I’d be even more inclined to take their product and have them lose money in the process.

I had Starlink for over 2 years while waiting for my fiber to be installed. Worlds better than the marginal DSL I had available before (5 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up), but I’m far happier with the fiber I have now.

This makes no sense on the face of it. Let’s say the satellites are 100 km (or miles) above the earth. If I was to connect to a server 10 km (or miles) away, my complete route over fiber is 10 km. My complete route over satellite is just over 200 km (assuming it’s between those two points). Now, let’s say the server is 500 km (we’ll assume the earth is flat over this expanse, even though that’s about 5° around the earth). So our fiber link has to go 500 km, more or less. Our satellite link has to go about 540 km, best case scenario. If we raise those satellites, it only gets worse (it’s probably closer to 860, best case scenario, for satellites at 350 km).

I just did a quick check, and the curvature of the earth over that 500 km scenario is about 20 km (it won’t be 20 miles for 500 miles).

Now, you might start to argue that were talking about straight lines, and that’s true for satellites but not for fiber. And that might be true. But we’ve already shown that the hop to space and back is already increasing that distance by 60% or more. But those two or so straight lines are just til you get to the Starlink hub, so you aren’t going to reduce this much more than the numbers above. And yes, fiber will have some extra distance due to following the grid rather than straight lines. But, again, that only matters to the ISP hub and then you’re back to the same distances.

The other argument you listed is the speed of light in space/atmosphere vs. fiber, and it’s a valid point. Not there are some interesting things done with guiding light to the center of the fiber, which is another way of saying there are multiple refractive indexes, but let’s go with a refractive index of 1.5. That means the speed of light in glass is 2/3×c, or that light in space can go about 50% farther. And that’s about the added distance for using LEO satellites.

tldr: All the benefits of transmitting through air or space are basically negated by the added distance, where the best-case scenario is only slightly better than the worst-case scenario for fiber.