The guys re-writing the social security computer system in a month weren't kids all that long ago. I hear that even back then, some of them were pretty good hackers.

Is that some fibre service? Because if it's in anywhere with a significant population, chances are if Starlink was $10/month it would be massively over-subscribed. Either they wouldn't let you join, or it would be too slow to be usable.

I wonder what the economics are really like though. Musk asked on Twitter if people would ditch their broadband if Starlink was available for $10/month. Heavy discounting, but of limited help because Starlink just doesn't have the bandwidth to serve all that many people.

It's possible that the economics of space based internet access just don't work. It's also possible that it becomes obsolete for broadband use as terrestrial bandwidth increases and it can't keep up.

True, although Bezos has turned the WSJ into his personal propaganda outlet.

Local Bytes do some that are CE certified, but for Europe of course. There is a big list of compatible plugs here: https://templates.blakadder.co...

Sonoff products often support Tasmota too, but can be a bit difficult to flash. The cheaper ones tend to be easier to flash, often just needing a couple of screws removing.

If you can't flash yourself, Local Bytes have them pre-flashed, or you can pre-flashed ones on eBay and AliExpress. I'm sure there must be US suppliers that offer them pre-flashed, if we have them in Europe.

If the only provider is Elon Musk, then yes we need competition.

The only viable alternative would be for StarLink to be un-bundled, that is Starlink would just operate the satellites and other ISPs would sell service to consumers. Similar to how DSL works in most of Europe.

I'd say the bigger concern with all these mega constellations is the risk of environmental damage and of collisions.

There are many smart plugs with energy monitoring that support the open source Tasmota firmware. No cloud needed, full control, WiFi.

If you dislike Musk, do you really want to be supporting Bezos instead?

Like Australia, for example. Germany has been reducing coal usage steadily.

It's just a fact. The longer you cling to centralized generation like nuclear, the longer you need to keep fossil fuels around waiting for it.

The UK's Hinkley Point C is a standard EPR design, of which several already exist. It's still taking 20+ years and tens of billions, only to produce some of the most expensive electricity in the UK.

Funny you should mention coal, because nuclear tends to support it. Instead of just replacing fossil fuels with renewables, they keep them going until the nuclear plant comes online a few decades later.

It doesn't seem very mature, given they keep finding issues, and keep promising that the next iteration will finally be the really good one.

The usual solution to this is a set of standardized tests, say for common USB PD voltages at the maximum current available.

But those don't take into account the inefficiency of the voltage conversion. From a consumer point of view they want to know what to buy, not what the capacity of the internal battery is.

It's even worse when they try to compare it to their phone. Knowing the energy in the phone battery and in the mobile battery doesn't tell them how many actual charges of the phone they can get.

Europe isn't so keen on nuclear, actually. The French went all-in on it, and it cost them dearly. The subsidies are massive and eventually the government had to bail out the operator when their debt exceeded their assets.

It takes a minimum of 20 years to build a new nuclear plant here, and they always go over budget and get delayed.