Belgian boffins dump Starlink dish terminal's firmware, gain root access and a few ideas Belgian boffins have published a teardown of the Starlink user terminal – also known as Dishy McFlatface – in which they managed to dump the device's firmware that was housed on a eMMC card upon the PCB. For the academics at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven), actually getting their hands on the firmware for later …
This reminds me of a colleague (in the early '90s I guess) who participated in the standardisation process for data comms using satellite phones. A rep from another company rather pompously asserted that because the existing satellite phone standards included, as a mandatory requirement, the phone reporting its precise position (using GPS data) that could be used as part of the routing for the data (actually I think it was probably mostly for billing - so the country concerned could get a cut).
My colleague suggested that as a major market for satellite phones (at the time) were militaries and spies it was unlikely most of the phones would be reporting accurate locations, despite mandatory requirements from the CCITT! He suggested that if they looked at the data they may find that a surprising number of phones are being used at the North Pole. Of course, at that time, it was nation states which were being talked about - I never knew if/when terrorists realised they had to acquire satellite phones which didn't report their location.
It will be interesting to see if SpaceX geofencing remains unbroken.
I understand the geofencing.
They don't want people to use the devices in countries they have no license to operate, as that would make them liable for huge fines.
Also, it is a beta and they need to make dure they understand where the dishes are, and to determine needs before putting more birds in space.
Elon commented that they plan to lift the geofencing latter this year.. so it might happen (or not). I still expect them to limit the movement of the fish to a single country/region, for legal reasons.
The primary reason for geofencung right now is to ensure dishes stay more or less where they're expected to be and don't cluster too much in one cell. Beamforming still makes for a big spot from 500-1500km away and right now there are only 920 active birds
I'm expecting that once tge first shell is fully active (1440 birds) they'll start relaxing restrictions and selling more terminals. There are already that many in orbit but it will take 3 more months or so to get them all in position (starlink.sx is useful to visualise thjngs)
There are at least 2 more shells to be built. The sun synchronous set only has a dozen flying so far and these are the only ones with fricking lasers onboard at the moment. The first 2 launches worth are already in the process of being retired and deorbited
What's more interesting than where ground stations are popping up is seeing where they AREN'T. I think national geofencing will quickly be bypassed by determined individuals without governments being able to really do much about it. (The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it)
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