The time to bounce a signal from ground to low earth orbit (2000km) and back at the speed of light is about 13ms. That's not terrible from a latency perspective, is it? In theory you could build a "low-latency" solution around that. Especially if the alternative is no access.
Google tells me that he low-end cost of launching a satellite is $50M. So launching 3000 would cost $150B. And obviously there are economies of scale available (could you launch 2? 5? 10? sats with one rocket?). It's an insane amount of money, but Apple has that much cash just lying around, so it's not impossible.
Mind boggling stuff.
With expenses like that, I wonder how expensive this will be to consumers - directly (charges for the service) and indirectly (data harvested from the consumers).
Oh, great. The creepy company that abuses monopolistic power, keeps unsecured personal information on their servers (including from facebook), has a poor reputation on privacy, is connected to an incredibly partisan newspaper, and has connections with the cia, is going to have an earth-wide network that has the capability to track anyone that uses it (and probably many that don't).
What could go wrong?
Oh, I don't know. Maybe things could even go right? How about considering the fact that people in places where the internet is heavily monitored or censored could use such a system to establish unfettered connections with the world outside? That Amazon's corporate interests are in the service of free markets, so they'll be glad to break down those barriers however possible?
And not to be seen as defending Amazon, but it's really not Amazon's fault that Facebook, which purchases cloud services from Amazon Web Services, made boatloads of data about Facebook users available via servers they lease from Amazon (and for which Facebook maintains complete control over access policies). Facebook made the data available, using servers they leased from Amazon. It could have been servers they leased from Microsoft Azure or IBM or Google, or anybody else for that matter. Facebook is the responsible party.
I don't trust Amazon with much of my data, but I regard them as a self-interested retailer - which means, they'd rather keep me as a customer than piss me off by abusing my trust. I may be wrong about that, but that's my going-in assumption.
Amazon's "connection" to the CIA, as I understand it, amounts to them selling CIA compute services - which Amazon is in business to do. I suppose that Ford, Chrysler, and GM are "connected" to the CIA because they sell them cars? (note: I don't honestly know who the CIA buys cars from, but I'm assuming they're US manufacturers, because of the Buy American Act).
If you're that concerned about Amazon tracking you, then I will offer a simple solution: just pull your tinfoil hat on a little tighter. That should fix it.
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With expenses like that, I wonder how expensive this will be to consumers - directly (charges for the service) and indirectly (data harvested from the consumers).
And not to be seen as defending Amazon, but it's really not Amazon's fault that Facebook, which purchases cloud services from Amazon Web Services, made boatloads of data about Facebook users available via servers they lease from Amazon (and for which Facebook maintains complete control over access policies). Facebook made the data available, using servers they leased from Amazon. It could have been servers they leased from Microsoft Azure or IBM or Google, or anybody else for that matter. Facebook is the responsible party.
I don't trust Amazon with much of my data, but I regard them as a self-interested retailer - which means, they'd rather keep me as a customer than piss me off by abusing my trust. I may be wrong about that, but that's my going-in assumption.
Amazon's "connection" to the CIA, as I understand it, amounts to them selling CIA compute services - which Amazon is in business to do. I suppose that Ford, Chrysler, and GM are "connected" to the CIA because they sell them cars? (note: I don't honestly know who the CIA buys cars from, but I'm assuming they're US manufacturers, because of the Buy American Act).
If you're that concerned about Amazon tracking you, then I will offer a simple solution: just pull your tinfoil hat on a little tighter. That should fix it.