“Give me a meme and a message board on which to post it, and I shall move the world”

-Archimedes

In Lemmy, if you put two spaces after the last letters, THEN go the next line it will make the vertical list you want

This text has two spaces after
This text does too
This text does not This text does not

Odd markup, but here we are.

Mesh back haul can get some distance connecting some communities aa well.

I don’t think community driven mesh networks are a realistically sized solution for the entire continental connectivity .

Ideally, to me, that would multinational orgnization building common infrastruture for the collective benefit.

Certainly that would be best for the many nations of the continent. However, that hasn’t happened and high speed internet as a basic utility has been commonplace as a utility in huge parts of the world already for decades. So without the ideal of a coalition of NGOs, are the under served nations on the African continent just supposed to go without instead of the tech companies building the infrastructure, and maintaining the ownership that comes with that, to bring these services as is detailed in the article?

So WISPs and 5G networks address “last mile” access. According to the article Google and Facebook are building undersea cables which don’t compete with last mile services, and in fact can help them as the existing backhaul circuits become saturated from continued new WISP and 5G users being added.

I think its fantastic that there are community built efforts to bring people online. However, it sounds like these are small pockets of efforts instead of national or continental efforts. If the WISPs or 5G service area are only in pockets, is it fair that millions of people should go without access to the internet just because they don’t live in one of the areas served by those existing community efforts?

What is the alternative to existing giant companies investing in the infrastructure? And why hasn’t that alternative already addressed this issue before the tech companies arrived?

As long as you’re doing your own whole disk encryption, you have a valid path to still be secure. However, if you’re running an unencrypted disk, you’re much more likely to lose your data to a non-state actor.

A pocket computer that can call.

I held that same mindset for years in the prior generation of technology. I had a Sharp Zaurus and later a Nokia n700 for pocket Linux computing. It took a large amount of effort to make them useful devices. Most people simply don’t have the time or ability to do that for themselves and products like iOS and Android deliver what they’re looking for right out of the box.

I hope it succeeds, but history hasn’t been kind to others that tried.

I want to see real Linux phones that don’t run Android and are somewhat competitive with Android phones, at least in the mid-range space.

There’s a large graveyard of attempts at this. The most recent and successful is probably Tizen. Prior to that Firefox OS. People just don’t buy them so there’s no market for them.

Thank you for that link, I appreciate it. Here’s what I searched, and as you can see your link doesn’t show up:

Your direct link does indeed show China successfully tested it. Thanks!

I did search it before I wrote my original comment, thats what I cited about the anti-satellite satellite effort China did. So I’ve already taken the time and came up empty. You’re saying it exists, but I didn’t find it in my original search. So I’m asked you because you encountered the info firsthand and may have a better chance of finding it.

I haven’t seen it. I’d happy to look at a link if you have one.

Maybe, but not guaranteed. Starlink satellites aren’t very big (meaning not very large pieces if they blow up). Additionally, Starlink satellites have active avoidance systems that can “dodge” debris to a degree (its slow, but space is big). Lastly, because the pieces would be small, they’d experience more atmospheric drag and fall back to Earth faster. Whether that means weeks instead of years, I don’t know.

That picture of the F-15 jet firing the missile was at a satellite 300 miles up. Starlink satellites are about 350 miles up.

It would be hard to do? How much would that affect the general use of starlink for users on other parts of the world?

Only two countries have demonstrated air launched rockets that can destroy satellites on orbit, the USA and Russia. There is good speculation that China has built anti-satellites satellites, but no one is aware of any actual proven test.

Here’s the USA’s anti-satellite rocket being launched on its one and only test:

Now, lets assume that all 3 countries decide they want to attack Starlink satellites at once with all their weapons. Perhaps they destroy 30 satellites in total. As of November 2025 the Starlink network surpassed 10,000 satellites in orbit. As for replacing the lost satellites, a single launch places 25 to 28 satellites in orbit at a time. Within the next 24 hours 25 more Starlink satellites will be launched:

In 4 days, another launch is occurring that will place 24 more Starlink satellites in orbit.

source

So destroying a few dozen Starlink satellites might cause a slight blip in coverage for maybe a few minutes tops in specific narrow geographic locations, but only for a little while until replacements move to positions.

Some Lemmy instances use Cloudflare for protection. I know that sopuli.xyz uses Anubis instead. Both these approaches would offer scraper protection without a captcha which would certainly be a high friction event for human users. Does shitjustworks use something like this?

Yep, this is what I do too and what I as pointing out. The carrier locked phones are even cheaper used than carrier unlocked.

You’ll usually end up paying more in the long run then if you went with unlocked and a MVNO.

You’re missing a component: you can buy used phones and go with an MVNO and skip the contract subsidy requirement for savings

I purchased a used carrier locked flagship phone for $250 when they were still selling for $1100 as new carrier-unlocked, then put it on my MVNO which is a subsidiary of the primary carrier (so the carrier lock doesn’t matter).

You can’t get those cost savings with a new contract phone nor a new carrier unlocked phone.

Make sure it’s carrier unlocked, but yeah.

I’m all for buying my own phones and not getting one bundled with service. However, many times getting a carrier unlocked phone carries a price premium. As long as you’re fine sticking with your current carrier, they can even be carrier locked and work just fine. I agree though, ownership of your phone outside of your carrier’s billing is the right way to go.

(this may not apply to burning music, I usually burn PSX games)

The original 23 wire modchip installation was not for the faint of heart.