If there is anything we know from past economic downturns, it's that people make really stupid decisions right before the downturn.

See: everyone getting rid of fuel inefficient vehicles in 2009, just to return to them in 2019, just to want to get rid of them again in 2026 because fuel prices.

We've now seen fuel prices go to "shock" levels about once a decade due to various disruptions and events. But people keep doing the same stupid shit - buying a vehicle that meets every single edge case they can think of, when 95% of their driving is a single-digit number of miles with only themselves in a 7-seat SUV that weighs 7000 pounds. So they buy a massive SUV that costs a shload of money to operate, just in case they need to haul their whole family and the contents of their basement up Mount Kilimanjaro some day.

Fast forward to today, where it's going to be the same deal -- only worse for us -- because Iran understands US election cycles, and knows they can hold out longer than an unwilling and unsupporting US electorate.

Congratulations - we traded a peaceful negotiated settlement that restricted enrichment and allowed international inspections anywhere they wanted to go, for much higher levels of enrichment, no inspections, and a closed Strait of Hormuz that has upended global economic stability.

THAT'S SO MUCH BETTER. And why? Because Trumplethinskin didn't like that Obama had a signature diplomatic victory that was working. So he undid it, caused the shit show we're in now, and then completely failed to fix it, making it worse and undermining global security at the same time.

Fuck around, find out; Middle-East edition.

Just remember ... when the aircraft manufacturer, IFEC systems builders, and airline operators get together, they can solve technical problems pretty well.

4G LTE service is installed in basically every narrow-body with in-flight connectivity of any kind.
GEO satellite data has been a thing for a really long time, using an antenna mounted on the top of the fuselage. This is an extension of that - building in another antenna into the pod that is tuned for LEO service.

Then feel free to not use it?

Here's the thing you don't seem to understand: the in-flight connectivity is already there. It's WiFi access points already running in the seat box that powers the seat-back displays. It's VLAN routers already running in the head-end to send your traffic to whatever networks the airline has a deal with.

Adding a LEO network is literally changing out an antenna on top of the fuselage, sign some paperwork, add the Starlink terminal in the electronics bay, and performing a software update on the IFEC head-end to enable the routing.

The airlines are going to do it because all the competing airlines are already doing it. United had a demonstration flight back in November showing LEO / Starlink access. Airbus is taking the right approach here: we provide you with a multi-orbit terminal, and the airline gets to decide what managed service provider they want to sign with and deliver to their passengers.

Moving forward, Airbus will do the same with the whole IFEC head-end: include an open platform by default in the aircraft, and let the fleet operator decide what software, entertainment, and connectivity is provided.

Nobody is looking to "compete" between LEO networks and ground-based LTE. The two can co-exist, and do, on airside hardware that has been flying for years. They just need to add the starlink terminals in the EE bay and replace the existing satellite antenna with a "multi-orbit" model that can talk to GEO and LEO satellites.

FYI this is exactly what airline operators are doing. They already have the LTE hardware in the planes, why rip it out unnecessarily?

Literally every airline that offers in-flight connectivity, and especially any airlines that operate wide-body service over an ocean is scrambling to sign with Starlink.

Their passengers want it. They want it, so they can implement converged software airside (i.e. show you ads while you're literally strapped into a seat with a display in front of you) as well as sell access to your eyeballs to streaming entertainment providers instead of paying to license the media you consume.

This is literally transformative for the billion+ dollar a year IFEC space. Unless you are a Chinese airline, in which case the government makes you shut it off while in Chinese airspace.

Not yet.

Also, it's not surprising that they are doing this on their Airbus frames, as Airbus is currently working on what they call their HBC+ program (high-bandwidth connectivity), and working directly with Panasonic for the hardware and software-defined networking / routing / etc, as Panasonic makes the vast majority of in-flight entertainment and connectivity hardware that is installed in both Airbus and Boeing aircraft.

United already announced very much the same for their fleet, backed by Panasonic creating the antennas and working with them to get Starlink terminals working with the existing NEXT-IS IFEC systems.

Panasonic has something like an 80% market share because it's a big expensive moat around these systems to get them flight rated. And their strategy isn't to create their own network competitor, but to enable "bring your own network" connectivity and support multi-orbit solutions such as both Viasat and Starlink, as well as traditional LTE celluar.

When I was a kid, what you just posted was known as "excusing bad behavior" or otherwise "an excuse"

Are you being paid to do PR for a shitty company that can't keep their customer list secure? If you're doing it for free, that makes me question how you value your own time.

If any other company didn't secure your data that isn't linked to a particular political personality, would you be this unconcerned and zen with it all? My guess is "no."

Can we stop giving a free pass to shitty people that don't do things properly for stupid reasons?

Don't worry, he'll just blame Joe Biden like he does with everything else.

Ahh, the Thug Fund: an idea so bad that even the rubber-stamp session that is the GOP Congress can't even get on board with it.

Maybe they don't like the idea of paying the people that tried to kill them 5 years ago?

Hey! They are just accessorizing to match their stupid overpriced shitty chinese Trump sneakers, and shitty stupid overpriced shitty chinese Trump wrist watch while reading from their collection of shitty chinese printed $99 Trump Bibles!

Don't forget the tariffs!

I just want to know if he was arrested for illegal dumping, because he did leave a couple tons of fucking garbage in that lake...

At least the Cybertruck, as shitty as it is, exists as a product, from a company that has a decent reputation for not totally fucking you over.

The Trump phone has always been a scam. There wasn't even a real phone until people started making noise about suing for not delivering after a year, at which point we get this warmed-over piece of shit, and a very nice security breach of their ordering system because they couldn't even be bothered to get that right.

Now they start shipping some white-label hunk of shit they slapped a bad piss-golden color onto and about 10 minutes of an AOSP skin job, all the while having second- or third-rate security simultaneously with being a very visible target on the Internet for hacking.

Yes, let me give these people my credit card number. Please!

They're not even painted good.

This has been a laughable scam since day 1, and if anyone actually ordered one of these shitbox phones from a fly-by-night MVNO that didn't exist a year ago, owned by a company that shows 6-digit quarterly revenue on 9-digit losses, they get what they deserve.

Cool.

Except that the commerce clause is a red herring. The legal jurisdiction for regulating time comes from Article I, Section 8, clause 5 that gives the Congress responsibility to regulate measures, metrics, weights, etc.

They establish time zones, they establish the lines on the time zones, and the offsets of those time zones. This is squarely within the "weights and measures" jurisdiction.