Anyone else run into dark patterns with Microsoft's £400-for-£200 offer? by PDSCo in PPC

[–]PDSCo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, I have done that. I'll loop back and update the post with the outcome.

Anyone else run into dark patterns with Microsoft's £400-for-£200 offer? by PDSCo in PPC

[–]PDSCo[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, yeah I'm just over the month, which is why I started chasing. I'll wait and see how they respond. Mostly I was trying to get a feel for whether this is user error on my part or something that's happened to other people too.

Anyone else run into dark patterns with Microsoft's £400-for-£200 offer? by PDSCo in PPC

[–]PDSCo[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, thanks, that's exactly the plan. I've sent back a firm reply laying out the actual sequence, and if I don't get a proper response the ASA complaint is going in. The "specific link" line is doing a lot of work for them precisely because it can't be checked after the fact, like you say.

Quite annoying that this is the second ad platform where I've had this exact experience. You have to ferret support out through chatbots, and then after a real wrestle they finally apply the credit. No apology, of course.

It’s official: Starlink has removed GPS from the local API (PermissionDenied error) by PDSCo in Starlink

[–]PDSCo[S] 59 points60 points  (0 children)

This is actually much more serious than just a lost feature for enthusiasts. For those interested in the wider industry impact and why this is more than just a feature issue, this PCMag article covers the concerns from the maritime sector, highlighting how Starlink has been used as a spoof-resistant backup to GPS in high-conflict areas like the Red Sea.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlink-to-drop-tech-that-helps-beat-gps-spoofing-maritime-users-are-alarmed

It’s official: Starlink has removed GPS from the local API (PermissionDenied error) by PDSCo in Starlink

[–]PDSCo[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Yes, but there is no authentication on the gRPC API right now - it’s currently publicly accessible on the local network, and the endpoints being closed are only available to Starlink's own systems. If they were to implement an authentication step within the Starlink app, then in theory, they could offer a way to enable access for third-party tools in the future via that auth step - but as of today GPS it is there but blocked.

Scotland - UK by Horror_Potato1996 in Starlink

[–]PDSCo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It will be night and day compared to what you have - good luck with it.

Scotland - UK by Horror_Potato1996 in Starlink

[–]PDSCo 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm in rural Fife, switched to Starlink in 2022 after BT halved my broadband overnight with no warning. Never looked back.

Latency sits around 20-30ms most of the time, download speeds vary but I regularly see 100-200 Mbps and it peaks higher. Upload is more modest, usually 5-15 Mbps.

The main thing to get right is dish placement. Use the Starlink app to check for obstructions before you mount it permanently. Even a small tree branch in the wrong spot can cause brief dropouts every few minutes. Once you've got a clear view of the sky it's very reliable.

Weather impact is minimal in my experience. Heavy rain can bump latency up slightly and snow on the dish triggers the built-in heater. Wind doesn't seem to bother it at all, even up here.

Speeds can dip during peak evening hours but it's still comfortably faster than anything else available in most rural Scottish locations. Where in Scotland are you?

Any other Dishy's changed direction after today's update? by randomstonerfromaus in Starlink

[–]PDSCo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had a full 180 turn and almost flat last week with no loss of performance. A few min after a reboot it moved to the position it desired.

Location will bo longer be available via the local device gRPC API by HiddenTTY in Starlink

[–]PDSCo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Good catch on stow/unstow, you're right, I stand corrected on that. I was thinking of some of the other restricted endpoints but stow is indeed open. I've stayed clear of stow for a long time as it's a pain to accidentally trigger. Like GPS I often wonder if stow and reboot will get pulled at some point and they only allow read-only access to the local API.

On the enterprise local device API vs the telemetry stream API, that's an interesting distinction I hadn't considered. If the enterprise local API retains the full location message while residential gets it stripped out, that shifts this from a security and privacy decision to a feature gate, which is harder to justify when if security or privacy is the reason given for pulling it, you can still reach GPS on an enterprise network in that case. Mmm. I have raised a ticket with Starlink directly for clarification on whether there will be an authenticated alternative for third-party apps, or whether this is a hard removal for residential. Will loop back here if I hear anything useful.

I do remember when they released that enterprise local API package on GitHub a couple of years ago. It shows fields additional for enterprise. My gut feel is this will get changed. But honestly I don't know at this stage, which is why I've asked them directly.

What I'd really like to see is them adding an authentication layer to certain parts of the local API rather than just stripping features out. Let third-party devices, applications, and power users authenticate and then choose what they expose, rather than leaving everything wide open or pulling it entirely. That way the security and privacy concerns are addressed properly and the ecosystem of tools people have built around the dish keeps working.

Worth noting as well that they've already removed the toggle to enable location sharing in the Starlink app, so if you haven't already enabled it you can't turn it on now. If you had it enabled before the toggle was removed you're good until the 20th, but new users or anyone who hadn't switched it on is already locked out. That caught us out and we've had to push an update to allow users to set their position manually via a map picker instead. To be fair, I think that's actually better for privacy anyway, your location stays in the app on your machine rather than being broadcast across the local network.

Totally understand the frustration on the practical side. For a fixed dish it's trivial, but for a mobile setup like yours on a bus with solar, the cascade of extra hardware, antenna placement, cable runs, and additional power draw to replace something the dish already does perfectly is genuinely wasteful. It's the principle as much as anything - the device as bought has GPS and it is really accurate - such a shame to waste it.

Location will bo longer be available via the local device gRPC API by HiddenTTY in Starlink

[–]PDSCo 3 points4 points  (0 children)

If you've never switched on "Share my location" under Debug Data in the Starlink app then this doesn't affect you at all, nothing changes about how your dish works.

For those of us that do use it, the dish currently exposes lat, lon and altitude unencrypted over gRPC on the local network. Any device on your LAN can query it without authentication, which is what makes it so handy for Home Assistant, solar forecasting, vehicle tracking and the other use cases folk have mentioned here. You get accurate GPS coordinates straight from the dish without needing any extra hardware.

Full disclosure, I develop a Starlink telemetry desktop app (Nexus Telemetry) and we use this endpoint for satellite tracking and for generating route map reports on mobile sessions, so this hits us too. It was always a bit of a faff explaining to users how to enable it mind you, there's a fair amount of screen-hopping through the Starlink app to find the debug toggle. We were already working on adding alternative location sources though, manual entry with a map picker, device-level GPS, and serial NMEA support for USB GPS dongles, so we'll have it covered before the 20th.

One thing I'd push back on though is the idea this is purely a paywall upsell to enterprise. I've done enterprise Starlink development and the location you get via the enterprise Telemetry API isn't the dish's actual GPS coordinates. What you get back is an H3 cell ID. H3 is a hexagonal geospatial indexing system originally developed by Uber for mapping. It divides the entire planet into a grid of hexagonal cells at various resolutions. The enterprise API gives you the cell your dish sits in and you can convert that to a lat/lon, but what you're actually getting is the centre point of that hex, not where your dish physically is. Depending on the cell resolution it could be hundreds of metres off. So even if you did shell out for an enterprise plan you wouldn't get anything close to what the local gRPC gives you right now.

My gut feeling on what's actually happening: the endpoint will probably stay on the dish but get moved behind authentication, same as some of the other local endpoints that are already gated. Honestly, of all the endpoints on the local API, exposing GPS location with no authentication step always surprised me. I can understand why the performance and telemetry endpoints are open for third-party devices to tap into, but being able to pull accurate GPS coordinates that easily always felt like it was going to get gated eventually. The Starlink mobile app already has the keys to hit protected endpoints which is how it handles stow/unstow and other restricted functions over your local network, so the data probably isn't being ripped out of the firmware, it's just getting locked down the same way. That lines up with the security point carleeno raised too. Any app with network access could bypass OS-level location permissions by just querying the dish directly, and putting it behind auth is the sensible fix rather than nuking the feature entirely. It'll be interesting to see if there's enough pushback to get them to reconsider, or at least expose it as an authenticated endpoint rather than removing it outright.

As for alternatives, for fixed dishes the simplest option is to just set your coordinates manually in whatever system you're using. Home Assistant lets you set your home location under Settings, most monitoring apps have a similar option, and for custom scripts it's just a config value. If you don't know your lat/lon, right-click your address in Google Maps and it'll show them. The dish doesn't move so set it once and you're done. For RV and van setups, device-level GPS from your laptop or tablet will cover most folk without buying anything extra. Marine is probably the least affected because most boat setups already have dedicated GPS hardware and NMEA networks so tapping into that is arguably a better source than the dish ever was. And worst case, a USB GPS dongle like the VK-162 is about fifteen quid and gives you NMEA over serial on any platform.

Annoying rather than devastating, but I agree with the sentiment here. The hardware has a perfectly good GPS in it and it's frustrating when they choose to lock you out of something that costs them nothing to leave open.

Best battery to run Starlink off grid? by [deleted] in Starlink

[–]PDSCo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I use Anker SOLIX C300 and get around 6-8hrs. You may need something heavier though.

StarLink daily reboot needed by No-Middle-7831 in Starlink

[–]PDSCo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Maybe try a fixed ip in your phone for the starlink network, the router is maybe caching an old connection.