#News from 02023 about #Elmu turning off #Starlink at some earlier time to thwart an attack by #Ukraine: “There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol,” Musk wrote on X, the platform previously known as Twitter. “The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor. If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.” Reporter Brad Dress writes: “Musk was concerned about Russia responding to the naval attack with a nuclear weapon, Isaacson wrote in the book, according to CNN. Ukrainian officials begged him to turn the service back on, but he declined to do it for the Crimea incident.”
on 02026-08-10#news from 02023 about Russia jamming #Starlink in #Ukraine, with the defense being to dig a 50 cm deep pit to put the antenna in
on 02026-07-25#Starlink bricked a bunch of customers’ terminals if they didn’t get a firmware update in time. I assume they changed the protocol on the satellites.
on 02026-04-16The US$600 #Starlink Mini dish is small enough to fit in a backpack and weighs 1.2kg.
on 02026-04-13#Starlink has a US$5/month “standby mode” plan: “Standby Mode debuted in August and is Starlink’s cheapest monthly plan, giving customers an affordable, albeit slow, way to use the satellite internet service. Speeds are capped at 500Kbps, but data is unlimited.” But you can no longer use it while in motion: “Starlink Disabled while moving”. The v2 antenna uses 35 watts, according to tpbsd on ##electronics. You can use it with the "mini dish", which the company has been loaning out for free but which costs US$600 if you buy it.
on 02026-04-13#Iran jamming #Starlink to violate #human-rights with impunity. #censorship
on 02026-01-15#narcosubs #news: “#Colombia seizes first unmanned narco-submarine with #Starlink antenna” owned by the Gulf Clan and with no crew, although in India a Starlink-steered vessel was seized in November with US$4.25 billion (!!) of meth
on 02025-11-11#video from May 19: #interview with #drones developer Sergey Tovkach from #Russia on how #weaponry from #Ukraine is far better than what the US and even China have, and now 70% of fatalities on the battlefield are from drones. “A special thanks to our Western partners, because where else could we have trained on so much of your equipment? You delivered it straight to the front, and we got to study it up close. We learned all the weak points. We learned exactly where to strike. (...) There isn’t a single Western drone that’s proven itself effective in this conflict.” He claims #China makes military gear that doesn’t survive being tossed out of a truck, “like toys”. Ukraine barely uses Chinese chips in their drones, but Russia’s have to be all Chinese. Talks about mine-laying drones (“in use for about a year and a half now”), “sleeper/ambush drones” (same time frame, Ukrainians first — drones playing possum, pretending to be “a real trophy”), and drones dropping caltrops welded from rebar. “Same [ambush tactics] with drones placed on rooftops or hilltops overlooking roads (...) when the vehicles come, the drone just takes off, flies a short distance, and hits its target. That whole tactic really took off with the rise of fiber optic drones,” because they don’t need to burn 5–10W to transmit the video feed. Russian operators now wind up used fiber-optic cables on a cordless drill to avoid giving away their position. “The Orbit [Russian remote piloting] system. (...) The Ukrainians have been using radio relays and internet bridges for a long time already. (...) #Starlink is the holy grail. (...) Take away Starlink and Ukraine’s entire fleet of naval drones disappears overnight. (...) Why doesn’t Russia have naval drones? Well, we do have the boats and, but we don’t have Starlink.” But he says Starlink’s #latency is too high for FPV drone piloting. Baba Yaga or “Vampire” drones dropping antitank mines with 6–8kg of TNT have been very effective; Russia is ramping up two factories to produce its own equivalent.
on 02025-06-17#video #toread about #Starlink in #Argentina
on 02024-09-10