Where was this? Members of my family have three different remote cabins surrounded by trees in Montana, Idaho, and Oregon, and all work perfectly. The early days were a little more glitchy, but with the constellation they have today, you don’t even need to aim.
2023 in the Pacific Northwest. We were given the argument that tree cover was a problem quite early on in our attempted troubleshooting. The house is a waterfront property, with a clear view of sky to the east. Anyways, the suspected issue continued to evolve, and we were not able to get to the bottom of it with the support we received.
Certainly, our experience could be an anomalous. But I certainly hear this happening all the time with Tesla, with the manufacturer trying to void warranties and evade liability for vehicle defects.
I just.. wouldn't be bullish on any of Elon's companies in a crowded market; which I suspect will define more his companies in the future. His politically obtuse behavior and lack of respect for authority is enough to turn off ethically minded consumers; and that's before the general crummy experience of being his customer. My best friend has a Honda EV that broke down twice, one time being potentially out of warranty-and the dealer repaired it, no questions asked
It can be counterintuitive because the user terminal is shaped like the kind of satellite dish we’re mentally prepared to understand, the kind we’ve had for the last 50 years, but it’s fundamentally different. The “clear view of the sky to the east” is the source of your problems. Starlink satellites move quickly across a the sky, and the dish needs a comparatively massive 100+ degree view angle to ensure continuous contact. If you look around online you can see comical configurations with Starlink mounted on enormous poles to get them above the tree line. This issue is the #1 cause of problems we see with new installs.
Realistically Starlink is not going to diagnose RF issues at your site. Microwave either works, or gets expensive fast (because you need an expensive person with expensive test equipment to properly investigate). A wild guess based on the available information is that reflections off the water surface are the cause.
Yeah I'm not really sure what issues you could reasonably expect a satellite internet provider to be troubleshooting at all. It's very much a 0 or 1 situation.
Again... the logistical structure of the company is not something that the customer should have to be privy to when trying to figure out if the product is going to workout for them, or not. If the product is not going to be working, the company should not be charging the customer $100 a month for 8 months promising a fix that will never come in.
Just pointing out that there's things you can't diagnose without being physically present. And these kinds of issues aren't only existent in Telecoms or SATCOM in particular.
The user should ask for a credit/refund. The product was almost certainly working. But not meeting expectations. If not it wouldn't have been on for 8 months. Can't tell me you ran 0 bytes over it
Generally, sky to north is what matters. I've done a fair bit of boondocking with starlink and found it to be very sensitive to tree cover in the wrong part of the sky.
I don't think that starlink's support or documentation is particularly great, but it still seems better than my experiences will cell phone and internet service providers.
Did you try a different wifi hotspot, convinced the one they ship with it sucks from my experience with it. Couldn't handle a connection maybe 8 meters away and one floor up, no walls.
IMO it depends on what you see as the point of business and entrepreneurship. I don't see money as the goal, but rather on creating great things. So Buffet wouldn't even rank for me, while you would have omitted Musk's closest competitor - Thomas Edison.
Put another way, if in 30 years Musk has 10 trillion in wealth would seem, to me, to be much less relevant than if he succeeds in making humanity a permanently multi-planetary species.
Advancing humanity in so many different revolutionary fields all at once is something that had not been achieved in a very long time.
I get what you're saying, but I also think you're being reductive in devaluing wealth creation.
Why is a company worth more today than it was five years ago?
Because it's generating more revenue, has more assets... is better at doing whatever {company thing} is.
One can argue that (a) {company thing} isn't good for humanity at all and/or (b) a company which generates more money isn't really more successful, but merely a side effect of capitalist valuing.
And maybe...
But I'd say there's a pretty strong argument that Buffett is worth what he is because BH made multiple companies very much better at doing what they do. In the same way that Ford or Walton made their money by building companies that did what they did better.
And I'd add in the perspective that science and discovery without engineering into mass application is... a hobby with limited impact. The real litmus test is "Can you use this to improve many people's lives?"
And when you do that in a capitalist society, you usually have a chance to make a lot of money.
Many people don't have any real understanding of how wealthy people have been in the past. The Walton family is a fun case. Split the fortune among the family and there are still billionaires in the mix.
Edit: should add that Elon is still valued at a good percentage of the US gdp. So, not unreasonable to say that is incomprehensible, as well. By that measure, is similar to Rockefeller, I think.
I wouldn’t use the Waltons in this example, considering Walmart is eclipsed by a few companies, and even by 50% by one business that Musk has a significant share of.
Silly comparison, all told. Walmart is the single largest private employer. 1.6 million in the US. Literally 10x what Tesla and SpaceX have. Such that it is clear valuation is tough.
Look, Elon is worth a lot. Walton family is worth as much, as well. Just split among several people. None of which should be scoffed at. None are made more impressive by pretending the others are less.
This characterization isn't entirely unreasonable. Isn't Musk objectively the richest businessperson ever in nominal dollars? Inflation-adjusted, I think only Rockefeller or Carnegie may come close, but the variety of businesses Musk has is impressive, and it appears he is just getting started with a long way to go.
Inflation-adjusted I believe Rockefeller was worth more than $400b at the peak of his wealth.
The Walton estate now is worth over $350b, but it’s not a fair comparison as it’s had much longer to compound.
The other thing is that while SpaceX is incredibly successful, the other companies he’s started aren’t. Tesla (despite its massive growth) is in a market of rapidly growing competitors, and he’s on record saying the company lives or dies on tech his own engineers have suggested in court isn’t coming (FSD).
I think this is a psychological thing. Humans during evolution were highly rewarded for seeking and keeping powerful allies. So by imagining that Elon is my friend (because I'm his friend) and Elon is really intrinsically powerful (instead of just a lucky, well positioned grifter that can fall from grace at any moment) I can feel better about my own safety. I can feel more powerful by extension and the indirection somehow muddles that fact that it's all made up. The same mechanism works in religious people.
You might be onto something but we need a proper "evolutionary theory of bootlicking" before we get carried away.
Its pretty clear that the all-too-common in space and time hierarchies, oligarchies, command-and-control pyramids etc. rely on trickle-down privilege to sustain.
But the feeligs of disgust and disbelief at how a person can diminish themselves in the hope of some crumbs falling their way must also have strong evolutionary basis?
The OP said “the most successful businessman in the world”.
Sure one can argue about how OP came to that conclusion, by what measure, etc, but the man produced a highly successful car company, in a field nobody has really been able to do it, under terms where everyone was counting down the days until it went bankrupt.
That alone is an amazing feat.
Then he went on to create a rocket company that broke barriers of space travel no one has been able to do.
Then he started a satellite company that pushed the boundaries of communication for the average person.
I’d say all those feats are worthy of praise and make him a person who stands out significantly from any other businessman in recent history.
So saying he’s the “most successful businessman” doesn’t seem like an absurd or overly hyperbolic statement.
And how you got “stroking off” or the even more absurd “bootlicking” from that statement is just bizarre. I saw zero evidence of either.
I’d say your comments are the odd ones here and say more about you than the OP.
> Then he went on to create a rocket company that broke barriers of space travel no one has been able to do.
Look closer into how the sausage is made. For example the Moon grant for SpaceX to the tune of about $3bln was awarded by a person who wrote it in first person singular and after she did it, she promptly quit and went to work for SpaceX.
Musk is definitely successful, but a grifter not a businessman.
> [...] man produced a highly successful car company
Musk is claiming to posess and even selling non-existent technology to both investors and consumers (pre-orders never fullfilled) for almost a decade now. Other people (Theranos, Nikola) who tried to replicate his success in this field but didn't have pants padded with hundred bln$ are curretly serving very long prison sentences for investor fraud. While Musk got off on the grounds that what he says is widely known to be pure puffery and no-one of sound mind should expect what he says to be accurate. Funny how billions "in the bank" can change how justice percieves you.
Musk is now basically so full of hot air that when he stumbles he falls up.
We also used to not have have LLMs, bipedal and quadrupedal robots, ubiquitous GPS maps, cell phones, miniature cameras of insane quality, ridiculously fast mobile internet connections, residential fiber and many other useful things.
Many smart people make things happen all the time. Regardless of whether there's some singular rich grifter in that specific that can latch onto them soon enough to claim credit or not.
It's just scary that so many people that find such "businessman" something to admire.
That latching onto smart people and ousting them out of their own achievements and replacing with yourself in public imagination is something to admire.
People make a simple statement "Musk is the most successful businessman" and you think you know their internal thought process and are ready to condemn them.
This simple statement shows that either they don't understand what kind of "businessman" Musk is exactly or they know but they don't care about it. He's the most successful grifter. Most successful conman. Those are simple statementd too. I condemn people who say those in honest admiration. I also condemn those ignorant of what means to be the kind of businessman Musk is while praising him.
It sounds like your entire point is "stop liking things I don't like". The very fact you say "I condemn people who say those in honest admiration" shows this is more about you than the person who made the comment.
You've provided zero evidence to back of your claims of "grifter" (whatever that is).
It's not hard. Businessmen run businesses. Musk runs many and in a very successful way. You're entitled to your own opinions, but that's what they are - nothing more than your opinions.
sorry, the burden is on you to distinguish genuine business accomplishment from what others might suspect, less charitably, is excellence in crony capitalism [1],[2].
The Economist made a feeble effort to rank countries in this respect [3] but it does not even include the tech sector in the "crony-prone" sectors (eyes rolling).
[1] "situation in which businesses profit from a close relationship with state power, either through an anti-competitive regulatory environment, direct government largesse, and/or corruption. Examples given for crony capitalism include obtainment of permits, government grants, tax breaks, or other undue influence from businesses over the state's deployment of public goods, for example, mining concessions for primary commodities or contracts for public works" etc.
sorry, the burden is on you to distinguish genuine business accomplishment from what others might suspect, less charitably, is excellence in crony capitalism
No, actually the burden is on the person making that claim (you).
If you think "ideal businessmen" can spend millions to influence political outcomes and overtly commingle public and private interests I question the integrity of your judgement and feel no burden whatsoever.
> Now that you’ve brought up political money and public and private interests
"Crony capitalism, sometimes also called simply cronyism, is a pejorative term used in political discourse to describe a situation in which businesses profit from a close relationship with state power, [...] In other words, it is used to describe a situation where businesses thrive not as a result of free enterprise, but rather collusion between a business class and the political class."
> I can think of any other business who doesn’t spend millions for politics and “commingle public and private interests”
So if cronyism is prevalent in US to some degree then a person who does that best shouldn't be criticisized?
So please provide evidence how Tesla, SpaceX or Starlink have benefited from "a close relationship with state power".
You realize that prior to the latest election, the government generally was opposed to Elon Musk. He was investigated by the SEC, and attacked by politicians.
That sounds like the opposite of crony capitalism.
> So if cronyism is prevalent in US to some degree then a person who does that best shouldn't be criticisized?
Maybe you should start with some evidence first? Honestly, it sounds like you just don't like him and you're mad that others do like him.
I find your view even more perplexing. I get that it’s entirely motivated by anger and contempt, but it’s still weird that someone would get upset over the respect someone else is getting online.
I suppose it’s some deep personality trait difference that makes us right wingers appreciate his work and what makes leftists hate his guts.
> SpaceX - may or may not be profitable in the last year - it's hard to know. Until recently definitely no profitable
SpaceX is very much in the same position as early Amazon.
If they wanted to, they could be profitable today. But they are investing heavily in the future.
IMO, that's a good sign for SpaceX. Many large companies have run out of ideas of what to do with money, so they accumulate it in bank accounts, or do dividends/stock buybacks.
