back to article Facebook taps up NASA boffins to launch drone fleet, laser comms lab

Facebook has assembled a team of experts in the US and UK tasked with connecting the social network's next five billion users to the website (and the rest of the internet). The Connectivity Lab was revealed on Thursday: it employs "the same engineering talent behind Facebook's infrastructure team and the Open Compute Project …

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  1. Charles Manning

    Please fly lower

    It gives those of us with a shotgun a sporting chance.

  2. Chris G

    Optic Fibre? Pah!

    Who needs to wait for the latest optic fibre to come to our village? We've got direct laser comms from Farcebook dro..AAGH MY EYES! MY EYES!...

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
      Terminator

      Re: Optic Fibre? Pah!

      "AAGH MY EYES! MY EYES!.."

      You were looking at it wrong. If you look in just the right way it can fix your cateracts while you surf the pr0n.

      Something good might well come out of the think tank but I don't think it will be an autonomous, free flying mesh network.

      Twatdangling 'Loons V Solar Drones. Armed with frikken' lasers. It won't end well.

  3. Tom 38
    Joke

    Zuckerberg's main problem

    Eleventy billion dollars in the bank, but all the hollowed out volcanoes have already been snapped up.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Great idea, connecting the world..

    ... now if dysentry/malaria/malnutrition/fundamentalists dont kill me I will be able to share this joyous news with all my starving friends

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Headmaster

      Re: Great idea, connecting the world..

      So be grateful.

  5. Chris Tierney

    Ironic

    Ad Billboard? Look to your left/right/up and down.

  6. Mark 85

    Two possibilites....

    Either the CIA is offering him big dosh in the hopes of enticing the Taliban or Al Qaeda types to post selfies....

    or

    someone, somewhere thinks cat videos will find a big demand in Africa.

    1. Alister

      Re: Two possibilites....

      someone, somewhere thinks cat videos will find a big demand in Africa.

      Well, they do have much bigger cats in Africa...

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Based on openly published material, Zuckerburg should look towards the US defense industry for engineering satellite-laser link technology.

  8. M7S

    Longevity

    What happens when his products/services, and thus ability to fund this, goes the way of, for example, Second Life, which was the big thing a few years back?

    Don't remember them? Exactly. But at the time it was going to "change everything".

    It's a wonderful idea for a stop-gap but hopefully the countries benefitting will eventually be able to put in place something more robust before this project comes to an end. This might give them the breathing space to do so whilst their economies benefit (hopefully) from better connectivity for citizens.

    On a totally separate tack, does this remind anyone of the ArchAngel network from "The Sound of Drums"? I am sure other similar examples abound on the bookshelves of Reg readers.

    1. Sporkinum

      Re: Longevity

      Second Life will be what Facebook ends up with after they have fully assimilated Oculus Rift.

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