That, however, would be vastly more expensive. Maybe worth it from an overall ecological PoV, but I doubt power companies have an appetite for the CAPEX involved.
They (Apple) bought out intel's wireless modems and are using them instead of Qualcomm's chips. IIRC, they aren't the best in class when it comes to raw throughput, but quite good in terms of throughput vs power consumption.
It is wild how ARM - which was kind of a niche company and ISA - has taken the world by storm since the modern smartphone was born. Now their designs make their way upwards to big iron and AI datacenters.
Their previous lock-downs were on the hardware level, not offering ISA slots and stuff. The original Mac (then Mac+ and classic) had no expansion slots at all, and they started adding them only later.
ADB ports only finally went away when USB came out. But I do have to give Apple credit, because those fruity-colored iMacs with the hockey puck mouse, that had only USB ports... those are really what got USB to become fully adopted. PCs had USB ports for a while before those came out, but nobody made any peripherals, probably because Windows had really crappy support for it... Once those fruity iMacs were released, then came the flood of USB stuff.
>Also, does Nasdaq think it's worth killing the reputation of their index for the spacex listing?
If I had to guess, they are banking on the meme-factor. Tesla is already seriously overvalued IMO b/c it's the first real meme-stock. Now, they are learning lessons from the FTX-invented low-float meme-tokens in crypto and replicate the model in stocks. The story around SpaceX with it's valid successes makes for a very good meme-stock.
So, they hope that people actually want SpaceX exposure no matter what and do not understand how cancerous those low-flow/high-FDIV launches are.
Yes, you can sell and buy a different index. However, those who buy ETFs want broad market exposure without picking stocks (or ETFs). Also selling and re-buying means you have to pay taxes now - depending on jurisdiction, that is way worse than holding till you are retired and then selling.
SpaceX/Nasdaq want to distort the rules to make more money off the backs of those passive investors.
>But does a military really need that many to get the necessary capability?
No. The German army wants a constellation of initially 40, and later just over 100 satellites. They do not want or need to replicate the massive Starlink numbers.
The numbers just don't add up there. With just 40-100 satellites they need to be GEO, and this means crappy transfers, big lags (200-300 absolute minimum, more 500ms), and most importantly - big, power hungry antennas.
It's a PR project to calm people down, not a real solution.
I built an agentic framework that distills ADRs from Teams meetings where everyone discusses freely. Works surprisingly well to record the WHY without someone having to do the job.
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