Curious Canid

Actual computer scientists should also be included with those groups.

I have tried to charge my Samsung watch on all kinds of Qi devices. They don’t work. The newer Samsung phones can charge them, but only because they have a separate set of coils that support watches.

The new model is SAAH (Software As A Hostage). You would think that overpaid CTOs and CEOS would be able to anticipate something as obvious as this. “The Cloud” just means “someone else’s server”.

I don’t think any of the current Meshtastic radios can be used in the usual way via ethernet. Some support WiFi, but not the RAKs that I know about. That leaves USB and Bluetooth.

There is a very neat option that allows you to set up to remotely administer a node via radio. That has saved me a lot of trouble with my repeater. You can’t do everything that way that you could with a direct connection, but you can do most of it.

The repeater will automatically forward messages from your personal radio to anyone who is outside your direct range. You don’t have to do anything special to make that happen. Likewise, any node, including your repeater and your personal radio, will automatically forward encrypted messages without knowing what’s in them. Only the endpoints need to have the encryption keys. Anything in between just forwards the raw data.

I’m glad it was useful to you!

Easiest and least expensive are a little different, so I’ll talk briefly about both.

The easiest is to go on Etsy and search for Meshtastic. You will find plenty of people who will build you a ready-to-go unit, both individual radios and solar-powered repeaters. (If you plan to put your repeater somewhere with power you can use any radio as a repeater, just put a good antenna on it.) Pre-built units start at around $60 and can go up into the hundreds, but $60 to $90 will get you a great personal radio.

The least expensive is to order a kit from one of the many companies that sell them. If the kit does not come with a case, check Etsy for cases that match your kit. Most kits do not require soldering, you just have to plug in various cables and connectors, then fit everything into the case. Some actually come fully assembled. This approach generally costs somewhere between half and two-thirds of what a pre-built setup will run. Kits start as low as $10, although most or $20 to $40, and cases are mostly $20 to $35.

One of the harder parts is to figure out which radio kit you want, but there are just two major types. Those built around the ESP32 processor tend to be a little less expensive and offer the option of WiFi, but they have a much shorter battery life. Those built around the nRF52 processor cost a little more, do not offer WiFi, but have nearly 10 times the battery life. WiFi is only used in a few specific cases, usually by repeaters and not personal units, so you may well not need it. Battery life is not usually an issue for personal radios, since nearly all of them will go for a full day between charges, but sometimes you may want more than that. Stand-alone repeaters that run off solar panels are almost all based on the nRF52 because of the battery life.

The most common starter radios are based on the Heltec V3 kit, which is based on the ESP32. It has been around a long time, it is relatively inexpensive, and it can do pretty much everything. The only downside is battery life, which may or may not matter to you. Unless that’s a concern, you can’t go wrong with a V3. My personal favorite is the T114 kit, also from Heltec, which is based on the nRF52. It is much like the V3, but without WiFi and with much better battery life.

I would wait until you’ve played with a personal radio before buying a repeater. Every Meshtastic radio acts as a repeater, so you don’t necessarily need a dedicated repeated. Find out how many nodes are in your area and what kind of coverage you get. If there aren’t many nodes, or distance is limited, you can consider a dedicated repeater.

Basically, a repeater is just a node with a good location that’s put in a good location, up as high as possible. Because Meshtastic radios use very little power, it is practical to make completely self-sufficient solar repeater units that never require charging. You can put one of those on your roof, up in a tree, or on top of a nearby hill or mountain, without having to worry about regularly climbing back up there.

I strongly recommend that you go to meshtastic.org and read through the Getting Started documentation. It provides a lot more detail (and less personal opinion). And check out the Meshtastic communities on Lemmy. Have fun!

My wife and I each have a radio, as do several of my friends. They’re handy for anything where you may not have cell coverage, like camping. We also use them at protests, to avoid the heavy surveillance that’s being done on cell networks. Even if the authorities start looking at Meshtastic, everything except the public channel uses PGP end-to-end encryption, and there is no middleman that has access to the unencrypted data.

We have also put up a repeater node. It’s on top of a house at the top of the highest ridge near us. Before it went up we rarely saw more than our own nodes. Now we see several dozen, and sometimes a lot more. And the repeater serves the whole community, not just us. The beauty of a mesh is that everyone contributes to everyone else’s coverage.

The mesh in our city is growing rapidly right now. Not only are there a lot of people getting their own nodes, there are a surprising number of people putting up repeaters to help spread the coverage. It’s amazing to watch our whole neighborhoods suddenly appear as gaps are filled in.

Actually saying that they want slave labor is considered bad public relations.

I’m getting a T-Deck, but I don’t feel too bad about using Bluetooth on a phone, as long as everything else is disabled. It isn’t hard to track, but it will be a distant third after cell and Wifi in terms of what the authorities will be tracking. Not ideal, but an acceptable compromise for now.

We got some Meshtastic radios that we use for protests (as well as for protests). They solve most of the problems quite neatly.

AI is already replacing significant parts of the technical workforce. The key is that it doesn’t have to successfully replace them. It just has to convince the sociopaths in the C-suites that they can pretend it will so they can layoff masses of employees. That will allow them to collect obscenely large bonuses, sell their stock at a huge profit, and move on to destroying the next round of businesses. Fortunately, the only people this will hurt are, well, us.

AI is so far from being the main problem with our current US educational system that I’m not sure why we bother to talk about it. Until we can produce students who meet minimum standards for literacy and critical thinking, AI is a sideshow.

The ratio of poor to ultra wealthy is far greater than a million to one. Other than that, the only practical reason they have for not doing it is that they still need human labor for most of what they do. That isn’t going to change anytime soon, despite AI. However, they don’t need their labor force to be free or happy, which is why the US is on the cusp of a fascist takeover.

The rule of law has largely stopped mattering to the ultra wealthy. It may occasionally inconvenience them, but they know it will never affect them in any personal way.

Not all of the ultra wealthy are socipaths. Unfortunately, terminal-stage capitalism does a surprisingly good job of selecting for sociopathy at the very top of the hierarchy. Becoming that rich requires both a strong belief that you deserve it and a disregard for how acquiring it harms others.

This is actually a triumph for Musk. SpaceX has figured out how to blow up their rockets without all the cost and time required to prepare for a launch.

Voice recognition with keyword commands works quite well and reliably. AI-based voice assistants are often not even “better than nothing”. In the time it gets me to argue the AI into doing what I want, I could park my car and write a better non-AI menuing system, to say nothing of using one.

That and the fear that Trump will disappear them next.

It’s awesome to see people stepping up like this! Our current situation is NOT normal.

I have added the swipe library to FUTO. It works, but not well enough for me. (That may be my clumsy swiping, but the issue remains.) I estimate that it gets about one word in four wrong. GBoard is still wrong about one time in ten, but at that rate, swiping and correcting is still much faster for me than traditional typing.

Circles are the worst possible shape in terms of making efficient use of the limited screen space available on a phone. The screen is rectangular and nearly everything we display falls into rectangular arrangements. Using circles just means there is less room on each key to show useful information, like the long-hold functions.

I’m not opposed to change, but change entirely for the sake of change usually produces bad results.

I periodically try FUTO. It’s a great keyboard, except for its swiping support. That seems to be gradually improving, but it isn’t quite there yet. Unfortunately that is how I do all my typing, so I keep going back to GBoard. I look forward to leaving it for good.