YHK - yet another hacker news clone

1. My iPhone, which has exactly the right amount of satellite communication for me: SOS and simple two-way texting, only when I actively point it at the right place in the sky, and

2. Aviation band handheld radio as a true last resort. Have one anyway as a pilot, and I figure it's unlikely I'll go more than a few hours without seeing some airliner I can talk to. Illegal to use those bands for this? Technically. Am I worried about the FCC putting me in jail if I'm down to my last fallback to get a critical message out? Nope.

Yes there’s satphones, but then might as well have the entire internet for the same price or less. The $10/mo Starlink standby plan seems well worth it for insurance

I spend enough time in these places that I'm happy with the balance. I don't run the dish mounted all the time. I don't go out to watch movies, though that could be nice when you are north of the 45th in winter and nights feel like they are 16 hours long. Also it's nice if you forgot to check if your offline maps are still downloaded.

That means I can now head out on Wednesday after work, drive 3-5 hours to the middle of no-where, and work Thursday and Friday. But each of those days, I am able to be done working and then at a camping site with my family. Go on hikes, fish, swim, etc.

So now my whole family can enjoy being in the wild, and I don't have to burn up vacation days. And we don't have to try to jam it all into a weekend were you feel like your just travelling the whole time.

Side note.. Having no signal on the west coast can actually be extremely dangerous, with how fast some wild-fires have spread. You can have one 10 miles away and not know it with the wind blowing the other way, and if it shifts direction, you can have a very limited time and path to get away.

Being able to check tools like WatchDuty and weather reports from the middle of nowhere is a safety feature.

Plus actually working in a nice place like that is in itself a luxury worth the price.

If only this incredible technical achievement could not be linked to such a toxic individual… eh one can only dream, maybe greatness requires a bit of madness.

Products like Apple Vision Pro promised working on productivity apps with beautiful views of Yosemite displayed behind the virtual computer screens. But now with a cell phone and voice mode (I don’t have starlink but I have enjoyed it in the past), I can work on my app while I’m taking a break in the middle of a bike ride.

I often say I love the work that I do but I don’t like being at the computer. Specifically that the best work I’ve done is sitting at a desktop in one place for hours at a day for years on end. To me, things like voice mode on mobile is a revelation. I long dreamed of doing productive work on the go, and this is a way I can do that. I’m not sure I want starlink personally, but I can certainly see the appeal of setting up at a park and getting a few hours of work done before putting it all away and doing a hike to the summit.

1. Sometimes I'm forced to work on weekends or risk getting PIP and I'd rather do it on a mountain or the beach. I hate to live this way and I'd rather work slower and enjoy nature but I'm not yet financially free, and my rent, food, and cardiac care are at the mercy of my fucking manager and HR. When I have a few million in the bank I can tell them to f off and spend time in nature on the weekends without worrying about the bills.

2. I do a lot of winter astrophotography and a lot of that time is spent waiting in the car for 5 hours in a no-reception area. Usually I read books, but hey, maybe this might mean that I can get more work done and reduce my risk of PIP.

3. Starlink might come in handy if there is a natural disaster, since it doesn't depend on local infrastructure.

Connectivity, when and where it's useful, it can be really extremely helpful. [BLANK_AUDIO]

It's obviously possible to say "I'm going to be unreachable", but people don't really like that, and it becomes a push-pull unless you're doing something where you genuinely have no service or connection. For a long time, being on an airplane allowed this sort of ability to disconnect: even if there were $5/minute in-seat phones, nobody reasonably expected to be able to reach you if you said you'd be on a flight. A few hours where you could fully tune out the noise of the world, no questions asked.

Wilderness backpacking trips have maintained this sort of unreachableness fairly well–I've had a Garmin inReach for years, and used it to keep family apprised of our movements, and once to coordinate a fairly serious situation where a large wildfire kicked up near our exit, but ultimately the slow messaging and short length limits prevent any real communication. Cell phones have also started getting satellite functionality, but it doesn't work very well, yet, at least as far as I've seen.

I see this march towards internet everywhere all the time as ultimately leading to expectations of connectivity, even in the most remote places–then "will you have made camp by 6pm on Tuesday? If so can you join this quick call?" becomes a real question people feel entitled to ask, notifications start coming through when you turn it on to check the weather, "I'm going back to my tent to check a few emails before bed" might be something you hear around the campfire...

There's a very different psychology when you're completely self-reliant, with no communication with civilization. It's hard to express precisely, but it's powerfully liberating and a much more immersive alternative from everyday civilization. The door is shut on other options for a few days, at least.

(Yes, there's risk - though that can be greatly overemphasized and there's risk in everything - and you need to rely on yourself (and your group) to mitigate those risks and respond effectively to them, not on others. One leading trainer I read said that, once you're out of harm's way, the first thing is think. Nothing is going to happen immediately; the ambulance isn't going to be there in 5 minutes; the doctors won't see you for days, at least.)

The risk isn't the focus. It's just you and world around you.

Last year, you couldn't get API access at all unless you went through one of their distributors or spent $1M+/year on Starlink, but now you can use the API [0] as a normal business customer. It's got pretty good telemetry and management features.

[0] https://starlink.readme.io/docs/getting-started

They have about 400 satellites already in orbit. It's not available for public sale yet but I believe they're close.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_internet_constellation?#Constellations

Let me reiterate. I think this is actually awesome and I'm sure 4.5hrs is a big accomplishment. Starlink is awesome. I just think for any product you need to discount the stated battery life significantly.