News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:SpaceX just got FCC approval to launch 7,518 satellites by ryanmarsh on Thursday November 15, 2018 @02:59PM (#18462751)
My knowledge of satellite internet is circa 2004 when I was in the desert of Iraq.

For the client premises equipment it's a hard problem but entirely solvable. Frequency hoping radios have been around a long time. Link bonding has been around a long time. Which satellites will be in view, where, and when is knowable. I think the harder part will be the backhaul... in space.

I'm curious if they'll use beam shaping antennas for CPE. Surely they won't ship antennas with moving parts right? Also I'm curious about the power requirements of the CPE.

Another problem will be security. This is a known problem with satellite uplinks. They basically spray everyone's traffic all over God's green Earth and if you listen in you used to be able to grab lots of data right out of the sky. These days it should all be encrypted, even then some of the encryption was easily cracked.

Re:SpaceX just got FCC approval to launch 7,518 satellites by bargl on Thursday November 15, 2018 @03:48PM (#18463150)
There is a startup called... googling... Kymeta. That is creating shape changing satellites for cars, planes, and ships.

Encryption might be handled by default with the https nature of the web now. But it'll just make https even more important going forward. It would also leave a lot of meta data open to sniffing which I don't think people would want either.

Re:SpaceX just got FCC approval to launch 7,518 satellites by shaklee3 on Thursday November 15, 2018 @08:35PM (#18465451)
Kymeta is not really a startup. They have been around for a very long time.