Currently in the middle of a long run and listening to spin cycle. You literally making me stop my run and come here to post because you just said you were buying Starlink for the tour.
Please, please consider not supporting a Nazi who has done so much damage to the US UK and the global south. I’ve been a member of escape since day one and I get that you want to do YouTube videos but it’s not worth it to compromise and support this jerk.
I’m gonna go back to my run now and keep listening to the lovely podcast. I hope you change your mind so me and like-minded members aren’t listening to the free feed soon.
Yeah I’m not an expert on 5G coverage in France, but it seems like a cellular hotspot with a sim card from the right carrier could be a good solution.
Edit: given Musk’s recent ascent to trillionaire, would you morally rather have SpaceX or UAE as a title sponsor for a Worldtour team? Discuss.
Unfortunately it absolutely is not. Jonny was up until 2 in the morning some nights last year trying to get modest sized video and audio uploaded.
I don’t like the guy either but it’s far and away the best solution. I also dislike most oil execs and healthcare execs but I have to buy their stuff too.
That’s a huge false equivalence there. Do oil execs and healthcare execs give Nazi salutes? Which oil or healthcare execs said empathy is a weakness?
I guess morals are easy to ignore when convenience can be had. That is 100% congruent with the sentiments of current US “leaders”.
OK. Too bad. I get it. But usually there is more than one mobile network provider in a country with varying reception quality for certain places. The trick in the EU usually is to get a SIM card from another EU country and you can use your data all over the EU as if you were in the country you got the card from, BUT: you can choose your provider freely abroad in the EU. Every phone has had this setting for ever where the mobile provider is selected manually by you and not automatically by the device. I would try anything just not to buy stuff from THIS guy.
I’m no fan of the guy either but Im pretty sure they would have been screwed without Starlink in Vanuatu in 2024 when the earthquake took out all their comms and internet.
Just to add a dissenting voice: I think it’s fine and the reasons make perfect sense to me. I trust that you have thought about this carefully enough to figure out whether it’s worth paying a little money to an unsavoury firm.
I don’t think it makes sense to be purists about these things. Sometimes, there’s no reasonable alternative and the little effect the decision has isn’t really worth spending too much brain power on.
The world is full of monsters and many of them run companies that we use. Choosing not to interact with them would leave most of us struggling to function in the world.
Caley is providing a product we’re all wanting and paying for. If everyone here now feels better-informed I guess we can all act according to our own morals.
Currently sitting in Le Bourg d’Oaisans (stage 20 finish of 2026 TdF).
The internet here is crap, don’t ask me why, but if your work depends on internet speed that’s not bound by a physical fibre cable through the wall, then I understand the need for something like Starlink.
I get patchy 3G most of the time, random 4G, and even 200-300 meters up a climb internet is gone all together.
It’s not as simple as ”just get a local SIM”
And I agree, Musk isn’t someone that I’d love to support either, hence why I drive a Kia instead of a Tesla, even if Tesla makes a superior electric car. But unfortunately Starlink can be the only viable solution.
As Caley noted, this isn’t about phone coverage and data. it is about uploading huge audio and video files for the daily pod. You aren’t going to do that from your phone.
I have no idea if the Eutelsat option is viable or not….if it is, I hope that EC chooses that option. If not, I understand that sometimes life and circumstances force you to make schitty choices. I would prefer not to support Amazon, but due to family health issues, it is the best option for us to get a lot of goods.
Part of the problem is that rural mobile networks get overloaded when the Tour is in town. Might work fine the rest of the year but we often can’t get a text message out on race day, let alone a video file.
I know this problem network overload and crappy bandwidth) is real. and I don’t know what the solution is. Still, as EC is not a news agency I am not convinced that this medium, which I see as very alternative and even left or socialist or communist - call it what you want - has to use products of a company owned by a Nazi and fascist. This is what distinguishes this guy from other executives or CEOs. and this is not an emergency. It’s just a cycling race, even being the biggest. And even as I’m convinced that our consumption choices do not have any significant meaning for capitalist markets, he is still a nazi.
But I also know it’s easy to say don’t use this shit sitting in ithe chair in my apartment waiting for pictures and news from the tour.
anyway thanks @D_Mase for bringing up this topic. I think this is very interesting how we behave in this fucked up world and what choices and what judgments we make.
and @caley_fretz I am not judging you, just trying to convince you of doing it a different way. But again, it’s easier from my, the consumer, perspective
Yup, the world is full of monsters, but this one has an LLM that does kiddie porn. That’s easy to overlook because he provides a service that’s convenient . One reason we have monsters is because some choose to interact with them and ignore what they’ve done.
Yeah unfortunately there is no different way. Eutalstat is available only to governments and one-off business contracts - I couldn’t get it if I tried, and if I somehow could, I doubt we could afford it. Mobile networks shut down when the Tour comes to town. Hotel wifi often sucks even worse, and you never know if it’ll work until you get there, at which point it’s too late to try something else. Every single WorldTour team car, every broadcast vehicle, all the motos doing live at something like Unbound - they’re all using it because it gets the job done.
Trust me, if there was another way to do the one thing we’re paid to do (get our work out via the internet, on time) I would take it. There isn’t.
