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How ham radio endures - and remains a disaster lifeline - in the iPhone era
  • You kinda made my point with the whole "try and find another operator to send 2400bps to" part. The digital communication is not conventional, it's revolutionary.
    Analog communication is conventional. And radios and their components aren't exotic.

    Yes, modern communication is fantastic. But analog will still be more reliable

  • Is it possible to be comfortable with two desktop OSs (e.g. shortcuts, mouse)
  • Eventually you will get used to it.
    You have 3 options.

    1. normalise to OSX shortcuts (and concile your Linux shortcuts to those). You are more likely to encounter an osx machine "in the wild", and if you have to get a new Mac then everything is instantly comfortable. Linux is also easier to customise.

    2. normalise to your Linux shortcuts. Figure out how to script osx to adopt those shortcuts (so you can quickly adopt a new work machine), and accept that you won't always be able to use those shortcuts (like when using a loaner or helping someone).

    3. accept the few years of confusing Osx Vs Linux shortcuts, and learn both.

    Option 3 is the most versatile. Takes ages, and you will still make mistakes.
    Option 2 is the least versatile, but is the fastest to adopt.
    Option 1 is fairly versatile, but probably has the longest adoption/pain period.

    If OSX is in your future, the it's option 1.
    Option 3 is probably the best.
    If you are never going to interact with any computer/server other than your own & other Linux machines, then option 2. Just make sure that every preference/shortcut you change is scriptable or at least documented and that the process is stored somewhere safe

  • How ham radio endures - and remains a disaster lifeline - in the iPhone era
  • I don't think smart phones are conventional communications. The are smart. They are still the "tech of tomorrow".
    Smart phones use conventional communications to do very clever things. But those clever things are range limited and require specialised equipment. They also have absolutely no "hackability" without specialised equipment (easy to get, sure... But still pretty much single purpose)

    AM is literally a couple caps, inductors, resistors (edit: and diode) then an amplifier (a couple transistors and resistors). And the range of lower frequency radio waves is (or can be) phenomenal.
    It's just that it takes some experience to operate on these frequencies, and their bandwidth is limited.

    Smart phones do away with the experience requirements, and trade higher frequencies & higher data rates for range (and I guess trade digital encoding for simplicity)

    I see parallels to software.
    People are nervous to "side loading apps" on their phone, but have no issues downloading and installing an exe on windows.
    Smart phones give you the "this is how" kind of experience, and abstract away the sheer amount of technology they leverage. Which is amazing, and is what makes them smart!
    But the underlying technology is phenomenal. And I feel it's a shame that the majority of people don't have any understanding of "installing an app" or similar (like calling internet access "WiFi".... 2 distinct things!)

  • Kamala Harris 'is in control of this hurricane' using 'weather weapons': Alex Jones
  • Nononononono, controlling the weather is how democrats keep power.
    Like when Trump redirected that hurricane (with a Sharpie), but it continued on its predicted path. Fucking democrats, man.

    (I hope this is obviously dripping with sarcasm, incase not...

    /s
    Trump & a lot of republicans taking the spotlight are idiots. Humans can control the weather: unfortunately that's from greenhouse gasses and global warming)

  • Keir Starmer pins economic growth hopes on British Hollywood with new tax relief
  • Brollywood is an excellent pun.

    British Hollywood - a portmanteau.
    Brolly Wood - brolly is an umbrella in British slang.

    Sorry for dissecting this frog. I just want to make sure everyone can appreciate how delicious the pun is.

  • Wi-Fi Goes Long Range on New WiLo Standard
  • It's pretty serendipitous, actually.
    The past month I've done a somewhat deep dive into LoRa for a project.
    I ultimately dismissed it due to the data rates, but for simple remote controls or for sensors - things that report a couple bytes - it seems awesome.
    I'm sure you can squeeze higher data rates out of it, but when I evaluated it I decided to go with a hardwired network link (I had to have stability, dropped info wasn't an option. But the client had a strong preference for wireless)

  • Wi-Fi Goes Long Range on New WiLo Standard
  • WiFi uses BPSK/QPSK/OFDM/OFDMA modulation.
    LoRa uses CSS modulation.

    This is about hacking WiFi hardware to make WiFi modulated signal intelligible to a receiver expecting CSS modulation, and have the WiFi hardware demodulate a CSS signal.
    Thus making WiFi chips work with LoRa chips.

    LoRa doesn't care about the carrier frequency.
    So the fact that it's LoRa at 2.4ghz doesn't matter. It's still LoRa.

    I'm sure there will be a use for this at some point.
    Certainly useful for directly interfacing with LoRa devices from a laptop.
    I feel that anyone actually deploying LoRa IoT would be working at a lower level than "throw a laptop at it" kinda thing

  • Wi-Fi Goes Long Range on New WiLo Standard
  • It's LoRa on 2.4ghz.
    It's just that chirp signals are easy to decode from a lot of noise.
    And they don't really affect most other modulation techniques. I think you can even have multiple CSS coded signals on the same frequency, as long as they are configured slightly differently.

    LoRa is incredibly resilient.
    It's just really really slow

  • Microsoft Edge gets "unfair advantage", browser makers claim
  • The issue is with how aggressive Microsoft is about it.

    Trying to download chrome? "Hey, are you sure you don't want to try Edge?".
    Changing default browser? "Hey, are you sure you don't want to try Edge?".
    Windows update... "We've done you a solid, because we know you want to use Edge".
    I'm sure at one point, it was a warning in the security center that you aren't using Edge.
    Also Teams (in sure there are others) will open links in Edge, despite what default browser you have set.

  • Godot staff are facing a huge reactionary backlash on Xitter for being "woke"
  • And there have been 5 people banned from GitHub due to racist and homophobic slurs, which violates Godot CoC and GH ToS.
    I don't think these users were providing valid criticism. Never mind the fact that GH issues are not really the place to complain about some twitter drama.

    https://beehaw.org/comment/3969324

  • Why laptop support, why now: FreeBSD’s strategic move toward broader adoption
  • https://freebsdfoundation.org/netflix-case-study/

    However https://lobste.rs/s/wh6yhk/why_we_run_freebsd_current_at_netflix has some more discussion.

    Seems like BSD was the right answer when they started running a CDN. They developed a strong BSD team that contributes to upstream. At this point, retooling to use another OS is probably a massive investment for questionable gain (like, what would the benefits be?!).

    Ultimately, they chose BSD, developed BSD, contributed to BSD.
    At this point, it's a custom shoe they have helped design, and it fits like a glove. Or something

  • let me sleep
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