News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Project Loon by VikingCoder on Monday June 17, 2013 @10:25AM (#5893310)
Utility is not binary. If they provide intermittent access to people who've never had it before, that's a huge deal.
Re:Project Loon by mtdewcmu on Monday June 17, 2013 @04:12PM (#5895619)
The site linked here has a tone of triumphalism, but you can tell from other information about this project that Google is approaching this realistically. I like how Google's engineer said that they're expecting many more iterations of prototypes. No one in Africa is going to be grateful for a system that's a nonworking pile of junk. Whether or not it's worth rolling out will depend on how well it works technically, and that will become clear through testing.