Dave Täht has died

Dave had a rtalk about Starlink at Wireless Battlemesh in Paris in 2019, we had some beers:

https://media.freifunk.net/v/lightning-talk-starlink

Rest in peace my friend.

The fact that he applied to starlink and they didn't hire him is depressing....

I don't think his personality was compatible with the corporate world.

I really hope he did find out, or at least had a good theory, on what protocol stack Starlink runs on. The engineering achievement is amazing, but it's sad that it all seems to happen entirely behind closed doors.

https://blog.apnic.net/2024/05/17/a-transport-protocols-view... is the best resource on its channel properties I've seen so far, but it's all empirical.

What a stunning condemnation of the corporate world.

I know Dave was still trying to figure out exactly how Starlink worked, and how he could help with its performance characteristics, at least two years after that talk, as he sent me a draft of a document related to that.

They hired someone from Netflix that studied at his feet

According to Toke Høiland-Jørgensen's memorial of him[1], he turned down offers from big companies to stay independent.

This is a sad day. There's no doubt that his efforts benefitted very many people, without their knowledge.

[1] https://blog.tohojo.dk/2025/04/remembering-dave-t%C3%A4ht.ht...