@vk6flab@lemmy.radio
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vk6flab

@vk6flab@lemmy.radio

Anything and everything Amateur Radio and beyond. Heavily into Open Source and SDR, working on a multi band monitor and transmitter.

VK6FLAB

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vk6flab,
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In my opinion, you’re solving the wrong problem with the wrong solution.

The user base for Canonical, Red Hat and SUSE is not the general public watching traditional TV to decide that they want to install Linux across their enterprise data centre, it’s ICT professionals who talk to other ICT professionals and read white papers and implementation guidelines, then pay installation, management and subscription fees to get ongoing support across their shiny new data centre.

Growing the user base with mums and dads is not something that Linux vendors are interested in, since it only costs money instead of generating an income stream.

Linux as a commodity comes from rolling out Android phones and tablets, from deploying embedded Linux on network routers, security cameras, in-car entertainment systems, set top boxes, etc.

The final hurdle for general desktop Linux is not resolved by getting more users through advertising, it’s through having a product that can be purchased. Chromebooks were promising, but missed the mark.

System76 are trying, but the scale is too small and Linux isn’t ready as a general computing platform yet. I say that having been a Linux user for 25 years.

If you don’t agree with that last statement, consider what all computer manufacturers would do at the drop of a hat if they thought it would be cheaper, they’d drop Windows like the hot mess it is.

Unfortunately, it’s still cheaper to pay the Microsoft tax because the associated support network is already in place for the general public.

That’s not there, yet, for Linux.

It remains to be seen if ever will be.

vk6flab,
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What about something novel, like installing actual Debian?

vk6flab,
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I don’t have a touchscreen, so I have no lived experience, but this should get you started at least:

wiki.debian.org/TabletAndTouchScreen

vk6flab,
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It’s an interesting question.

Perhaps I’m not devious enough, but the only impact I can see is insurance companies increasing your fees or denying cover.

vk6flab,
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A better headline:

“Visitor to Taiwan attempts to break biosecurity law and is hit with a fine”

vk6flab, (edited )
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So, after you build this Bat Roost, how do you tell the local bat population that you’re open for business … asking for … a friend, purely for … educational purposes.

vk6flab,
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Team Microsoft, reliably unreliable.

Rolling my own immutable distro

I’ve looked at a lot of other immutable distros and I might just end up using one of those, but I feel like taking on a bit of a challenge and there’s a few things I’m not very keen on with existing solutions (last paragraph is my idea if you want to skip the context)....

vk6flab,
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My semi-immutable OS is based around a Debian installation where every application is installed in a separate Docker container.

When you launch the application, it volume mounts an appropriate directory that contains only the data related to that application.

Chrome for example launches with a single subdirectory inside ~/Downloads, so each instance can only see its own directory.

I can also test compilation of random repositories inside a container, without affecting the underlying OS.

The OS itself has only got a minimal Debian and Docker installed.

Been using it for several years. I can’t recall when I last rebooted it.

vk6flab,
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Key distribution is a solved problem.

Key distribution at scale is not.

vk6flab, (edited )
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Can’t wait to hear the next headlines:

“AP reports that their seized equipment was damaged beyond repair”

And

“IDF apologies for inadvertent destruction of broadcast equipment during seizure”

vk6flab,
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The underlying issue with an LLM is that there is no “learning”. The model itself doesn’t dynamically change whilst it’s being used.

This article sets out a process that gives the ability to alter the model, by “dialling up” (or down) concepts. In other words, it’s changing the balance of the weight of concepts across the whole model.

Altering one concept is hardly “learning”, especially since it’s being done externally by researchers, but it’s a start.

A much larger problem is that the energy consumption is several orders of magnitude larger than that of our brain. I’m not convinced that we have enough energy to make a standalone “AI”.

What machine learning actually gave us is the ability to automatically improve a digital model of things, like weather prediction, something that took hours on a supercomputer to give you a week of forecast, now can be achieved on a laptop in minutes with a much longer range and accuracy. Machine learning made that possible.

An LLM is attempting the same thing with human language. It’s tantalising, but ultimately I think the idea applied to language to create “AI” is doomed.

vk6flab,
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Back propagation happens during the creation of the model, not after it’s deployed.

vk6flab,
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One of my colleagues managed to accidentally run something like rm -rf /var/tmp/ * on a Solaris machine that was the mail server for the entire organisation.

After the command finished they realised that the inadvertent space in front of the asterisk meant that the command did slightly more damage than intended.

They were told to leave the machine running to be able to fix it from a backup, but they rebooted instead.

An open file is still usable even after it’s been deleted, so the kernel and shell were still up and running … before the reboot …

If I recall, it took weeks to fix, involving floppy disks, Sun engineers and much egg on face.

vk6flab,
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Yeah, except for root that is exactly how it works.

As root you are permitted to shoot your own foot and are expected to know how to aim.

vk6flab,
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I’ve been using Linux for near enough a quarter of a century as my main desktop and I haven’t regretted it yet.

Linux today is plenty easy to use today for a non-technical audience, runs with less resources, has global communities, comes in your language and it’s free.

vk6flab,
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For those wondering why. vim is the name of a popular text editor.

vk6flab,
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Why?

vk6flab,
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Okay. I’ll bite.

Why does it need to be implemented by Proton, why specifically on Ubuntu Touch, why a VPN?

I realise that the last question might seem odd, but then so does this research: “Novel attack against virtually all VPN apps neuters their entire purpose”

arstechnica.com/…/novel-attack-against-virtually-…

I might add that this affects most VPN implications since 2002, so, 22 years of oops…

So, I’ll ask again, Why?

vk6flab,
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AFAIK Google is the biggest advertising platform on the planet and the idea that anyone could delete all their content from that platform is not one that I’d consider likely.

I’m happy to be proven wrong, in fact I’d be delighted to be wrong.

vk6flab,
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These are the required elements for making steel:

  • Iron
  • Carbon
  • Manganese
  • Chromium
  • Phosphorus
  • Sulphur
  • Nickel
  • Molybdenum
  • Titanium
  • Copper
  • Boron

Source: www.cliftonsteel.com/…/11elementsfoundinsteel

So, iron is only step 1. Humans are carbon based lifeforms, so I’m guessing that carbon is also sorted, that’s step 2.

There’s plenty of other elements in the human body, like phosphorus and sulphur, but I’m guessing that it’s going to take more than 300 adults.

Source: sciencenotes.org/elements-in-the-human-body-and-w…

Source: sciencenotes.org/…/PeriodicTableHumanBody.png

vk6flab,
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Mind you, those might not all be human…

vk6flab,
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As opposed to the real apps that … steal your data?

Instagram locked my account and forced me to appeal and send a picture of my face, so I sent a picture of Shrek. They deleted my account

I’ve been a social media hermit for the past 3 years but recently I’ve given up and created a few accounts across different apps again. It’s unreal how strict the requirements are now....

vk6flab,
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It’s right up there with random requirements to upload government photo id to suppliers in a different legal system. Hard Pass.

(I’m looking at you, PayPal, Airbnb and Stripe)

vk6flab,
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Here in Australia, they were attempting to force us to provide Government Photo ID on Airbnb several years ago, we stopped using them instead.

There’s a Know Your Customer (KYC) legislation that keeps being interpreted by numpties as requiring that they store these documents, rather than identify the user, create an account and dispose of the documents, which is making these companies rich hunting ground for infiltration by groups wanting to monetize personal data and provide identity theft services.

vk6flab,
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Note that there is no calibration of audio hardware, so the level of usefulness of any such software would be strictly limited.

vk6flab,
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I don’t know, but I doubt that the frequency response of a mobile phone microphone is either linear or consistent across sound level.

I don’t even think you could compare two sounds with different frequencies, but I don’t know.

I suspect that calibration of any such thing would require a whole lot of infrastructure, consider for example the angle of the phone in relation to sound and the impact of holding the phone in how it affects vibration and noise damping.

You might be able to use a calibrated sound level meter and pair it via Bluetooth with your phone, but I think that’s going to be as close as you might get.

In the past I’ve tried a wired USB microphone, but the OS isn’t real-time, so the jitter was horrendous. A pi would give you a more consistent result.

vk6flab,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

You can change how long a phone rings for. Talk to her telco for both landline and mobile.

In my experience, if someone doesn’t want to answer the phone, strapping it to their arm is unlikely to make any difference and in my experience they’re more likely than not to leave it on the charger.

Long battery life and tiny battery are on opposite ends of physics. Pick your poison.

Health monitoring is unlikely to be transmitted to emergency services, except iOS fall detection.

iOS and Android are both tracking as much as they can get away with.

Remote management is likely only with devices used in corporate settings.

vk6flab,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

Yes. As I said, I’m aware of Kermit. It’s like sendmail, user friendly, just picky who it makes friends with.

I have not discovered a complete language reference for Kermit, neither have I been able to determine if it works asynchronously, since the examples I’ve found are just polling loops, which is not what I need.

My use case is talking over serial to a CNC to iteratively calibrate it. This requires dealing with asynchronous events, think move, interrupt by edge switch.

vk6flab, (edited )
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No, it needs to be serial communication. My use case is talking to a CNC.

Edit: fat fingers: “ea” -> “to a”

vk6flab,
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I started down the bash path but came unstuck when I wanted to create a process that uses a single bidirectional serial port to write a move command, whilst reading the current location and checking to see if an end stop switch was closed to write a stop command.

Ideally, all of it is interrupt driven, but I’m at a loss to see how I can do this with either Kermit or expect. Both appear to use a send, then wait for a response model, even if you can check for different responses.

Of note is that the end stop is external to the serial communication, so I can’t check the same stream for that information.

vk6flab,
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That’s several recommendations for expect. I’ll start digging. Thank you.

vk6flab,
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Yeah, it’s already on a pi, connected to my LAN and the USB port of the CNC. The switch is on a gpio pin.

I need to automate the calibration of the three axis. In other words, tell the CNC to move a specific distance, then figure out how far it actually moved, update the number of steps per mm, rinse and repeat.

To implement this, I have a known calibrated distance, a set of three 1-2-3 blocks, so I actually need to move until the switch closes, then ask the CNC how far it thinks it moved.

I intend to run this several times because right now, doing it manually is giving me weird results and I’m trying to figure out the root cause of the error.

So, I need to move an axis, interrupt the move if the switch is closed, and keep moving until the switch is closed.

vk6flab,
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Yeah, I was hoping to avoid that, but it’s been heading that way for a few days now :}

vk6flab,
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I created some buttons with Tasker that log my desired entries into a seperate calendar which I download from time to time to analyse.

vk6flab,
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OMG!

That’s sensational! Thank you so very much!

vk6flab,
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I wonder if the need for speed that Netflix requires has any benchmarks that compares FreeBSD with things like OpenBSD, Debian, Ubuntu, RHEL and SUSE.

vk6flab,
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Uhm. AFAIK, you only have to share code under the GPL if you distribute binaries outside your organisation.

If it stays in-house, there’s no distribution, thus no requirement to share the source.

I’m happy to be wrong, feel free to point out what I missed.

vk6flab,
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It appears that there’s a bunch of benchmarks for various flavours of BSD already there. I’m not sure how to compare these with each other and various Linux distributions in a meaningful way.

vk6flab,
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Florida?

vk6flab,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

THIS is why I’m a firm advocate for Open Source Software.

Not because it’s better, not because it’s more secure, cheaper, sexier or any other commonly used “reason”.

It’s because having the source means that you can fix a bug for everyone, or just yourself.

This is just not possible in a closed source environment.

vk6flab,
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True dat

vk6flab,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

I don’t believe that it’s the root cause.

Enshitification is about monetization, getting more money from the same customer base.

If the product you are providing isn’t paying for itself with a sustainable margin then the prerequisites are in place for the wheels of enshitification to start moving.

Putting the foot on the accelerator is achieved by going public, selling the company, or pivoting to some random marketing weenie wet dream.

Most of this is fuelled by “free” products that become “fremium” when companies realise that monetizing you isn’t nearly as sustainable as the marketing department would have you believe. “You just need to grow!” - nevermind that the costs of running the infrastructure grow faster than the income generated by new customers. This is exacerbated by the silo mentality exhibited in many companies, the marketing department has no insight into the costs of the infrastructure team.

I think that we’re going to see much more of this before it gets any better. What better looks like is yet to be determined, since much of this is driven by the likes of Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and IBM.

I mention IBM in that list because it’s been buying up “free” software companies and changing their business models.

We live in interesting times…

vk6flab, (edited )
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

The vast majority of companies don’t start by being publicly traded. They begin life as a good idea, an itch to scratch, or how to make money fast.

The public trading happens when the founders run out of money or get stars in their eyes about “the fortune” they’re sitting on.

That’s where the wheels come off, but the process is well and truly in motion by that stage.

vk6flab,
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Looks interesting. Has anyone used this?

vk6flab,
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Unless something has recently changed, I was unable to play music that was downloaded inside YouTube music but refused to play if there was no internet access.

vk6flab,
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I’m not saying that the two are the same.

I’m pointing out that you are prevented from using either service offline because they want to track your behaviour in order to monetize your data.

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