@vk6flab@lemmy.radio
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

Lemmy is a failed Reddit alternative

I first joined Lemmy back during the big Reddit exodus of last year. I like many others wanted an alternative to Reddit, and I thought that this might’ve been the one. I made two accounts, one on lemmy.world and another on sh.itjust.works, in the June of last year that I used on and off for about 4 months....

vk6flab,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

I am part of the Reddit exodus. I’m here because I have no interest in promoting or supporting the atrocious policies that now govern Reddit.

The pace here is different, but the interactions feel more measured.

Based on being online since 1990, I’m comfortable with being an “early adopter”, even though I’ve only been here for a few months and Lemmy is five years old.

Will Lemmy survive? Who knows. The horse and buggy didn’t, neither did Yahoo!, MySpace or Google+, but here we are nonetheless.

I like it here.

vk6flab,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

I think that the missing link for the fediverse is the user interface that most users see.

This is oxymoronic given that the original Reddit looks eerily similar to Lemmy today, but it’s not just looks I’m talking about.

Moderation and usability tools, bots, blocks, filtering and spam control need to go through several iterations before we can actually grow this community.

Search is another issue, as is post deletion. Right now a post vanishes, but all the stuff hanging off it is still there. This makes for a complex user experience.

Finally, Lemmy appears to be run by developers who appear to be interested in their own issues and regularly appear to dismiss issues raised by users. This is not sustainable.

I consider myself a user of the fediverse before I’m a Lemmy or Mastodon user. We have a way to go before this settles down.

vk6flab,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

What’s the LEGO set code … asking … for a friend.

vk6flab,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

It’s a package management system in the same way that Flatpack, yum, apt-get, snap and dozens of others are.

If you use MacOS and Linux, it’s not inconceivable that you might want to use the same package management system across both.

I’ve used it, didn’t particularly warm to it and didn’t install it on my most recent MacOS install after it shat all over itself on a previous installation.

I didn’t know that it was available for Linux. Not tempted to try.

I’m a firm believer in apt-get and failing that, Docker with side journeys into podman.

vk6flab,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

Yes, and some days it even acknowledges that there are humans living outside of New York, or even beyond the United States.

Perhaps you might expand your game “design” team to include people outside those sitting in the same office.

At the rate you’re going, we are enjoying it less every day.

vk6flab,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

What about something novel, like installing actual Debian?

vk6flab,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

A better headline:

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

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

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,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

Key distribution is a solved problem.

Key distribution at scale is not.

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

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,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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

vk6flab,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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

vk6flab,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

Why?

vk6flab,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

Mind you, those might not all be human…

vk6flab,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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

vk6flab,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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 )
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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

Edit: fat fingers: “ea” -> “to a”

vk6flab,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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

vk6flab,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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

vk6flab,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

OMG!

That’s sensational! Thank you so very much!

vk6flab,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

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,
@vk6flab@lemmy.radio avatar

True dat

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • fightinggames
  • All magazines
    •