The vendor technical lock in side is difficult - there is lock in because they have developed a service to differentiate themselves from the competition....
You can reduce the lock in by reducing their feature set to a reduced level - most multi clout implementations basically use containers to do everything I think?
Should the fine not be the cost of a mission to move the satellite? It's within our technology now.
I thought the charge series was meant to be their basic 'not really smart' watches?
The quality of things being self promoted will on average be lower than that of content being posted by other people. (If your posting other people's content, it's because you think it's good, if you are posting yours it's just because you made it)
This isn't necessarily a problem, in a small community it adds content and helps the poster grow their skills. But in a larger community it can result in a lot of low quality content.
Not sure what your trying to show here....
They really didn't do a good job of making that clear until the very end of the article.
It's only junk if they are useless, which the functional satellites are definitely not.
I think the dead ones come down pretty quick, can't remember what the exact timing is from their full orbit though. (It's weeks from their launch orbit)
It's probably a fair point - any fire there is now going to be burning a while load of artificial materials instead (as well as) plants. I could see that being an issue if there was a big fire. (Much larger cost to the farmer too!)
You can't turn fitbits off (at least the fitness trackers). They are their on or flat (as far as I'm aware anyway)
Are there any offset or carbon capture projects that are actually regarded as being good?
I would love to be able to carbon capture the carbon costs of holidays etc.
If your willing to spend the money, testing things in practice can be much quicker than planning everything out. They admitted that they didn't expect it to reach orbit and that anything beyond the launchpad would be a success. I suspect that Elon pressured them to launch too early though.
The SLS is built using tried and tested technology, so it should have (and did) work, but due to (effectively) corruption it's stupidly expensive per launch.
The falcon 9 was 'impossible' to re-use untill they did it. It's now revolutionised the launch business. If they can do that again by doing the 'impossible' then it will have been worth it.
I do kinda agree with you on the lack of an escape system though, but if they can prove reliability on unmanned missions then it could work.
I think you are getting confused between geostationary orbit and legrange points.
Geostationary orbit is just the narrow band where you can have a stable orbit at the same speed as the earth's rotation (so it stays in the same place in the sky) no other gravitational bodies involved.