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Positioned Cybertrucks With Free Starlinks WiFi In LA
Los Angeles fire victims, help is on the way! Elon Musk has announced that Tesla will position Cybertrucks (which have plenty of battery life, and are thus independent of infrastructure) equipped with Starlinks (which can provide Internet access without local infrastructure) throughout devastated areas in Los Angeles, for the use of residents.
We are going to position Cybertrucks with Starlinks and free WiFi in a grid pattern in the areas that most need it in the greater LA/Malibu area https://t.co/oWilgDyVh5
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 12, 2025
Science fiction fans may recall that this idea was predicted about a quarter of a century ago. Localizers from A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge, which could also be used in devastated areas:
Localizers were a basic tool of an technical civilization. The tiny devices chirped their impulse codes at one another, using time of flight and distributed algorithms to accurately locate each participating device. Several thousand of them formed the positioning grid on the rubble pile. Together they were a kind of low-level network, providing information on the orientation, position, and relative velocity of the electric jets and the rubble.
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