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.
#geek #nerd #hamradio VK6FLAB #podcaster #australia #ITProfessional #voiceover #opentowork
- Comment on Is this soldered controller repairable by an amateur? 4 hours ago:
I would be extremely careful, since it failed for a reason and you were very lucky not to set the house on fire, which looks like it came pretty close to.
- Comment on Is there something like a spreadsheet for hierarchical data structures? 4 days ago:
There’s a whole range of cli tools to extract and query structured data like that, but you might consider loading it into something like sqlite3 and treating it as a database because those formats are really not intended for queries, they’re designed for sharing data.
- Comment on To what extent has Smartphones replaced Computers? Has Smartphones replaced Computers for you or people you know? Will Phones and Computers eventually merge into one device? 4 days ago:
For some workloads it’s true that you can do the heavy lifting on a more powerful remote machine and transport the results back to an endpoint device like a phone. Websites are a good relatable example of that, as are services like YouTube.
It’s not universally applicable for many activities that computers are involved with, data analysis, record keeping, simulations and a myriad of other processes.
Blurring of the lines between these different orders of magnitude is made possible by faster and faster networks, but that’s physically not able to beat processing done inside a single device.
The more powerful we make computers, the more complex problems we use them for. I suspect that this is unlikely to change as computers evolve.
- Comment on To what extent has Smartphones replaced Computers? Has Smartphones replaced Computers for you or people you know? Will Phones and Computers eventually merge into one device? 5 days ago:
One of the fundamental differences between phones, laptops, desktops, and beyond is size. While that sounds obvious, it also means that the amount of processing within the device is constrained by that size.
The constraints relate to how much energy can be used by each device and more importantly, how much cooling is available for the system.
It means that there’s a physical limit on how much work each device can do without being unusable.
While miniaturization is a factor, it’s not linear and you can only get so small before you fail.
So, depending on what you want to do in any given time, the device you use will dictate what’s physically possible.
- Comment on If every minority group came together under the same banner they would be the majority, and rights would be much easier to attain for everyone. 5 days ago:
This is a lesson that the religious fundamentalists currently running the USA have weaponised.
- Comment on Is there a service to check for reposts? 6 days ago:
A search engine?
- Comment on 16 Billion Apple, Facebook, Google And Other Passwords Leaked — Act Now 1 week ago:
There is a lot of hype in this article and precious little in the way of verifiable facts.
Does anyone have any links to something more credible?
- Comment on Should I be worried about "Prompt injection" attacks on my gmail? 2 weeks ago:
I work in ICT. Leaving Gmail is much easier said than done. It has the best spam filtering bar none and integrates with a whole host of other services that I use daily, like the mobile phone I’m writing this on for example, the one that integrates my calendar, tasks, contacts, photos, websites, YouTube channel, spreadsheets and, oh yeah … that other thing … Gmail.
So, if wishing made it so.
What I’d like is a Google Workspace tier that is entirely without AI.
- Comment on Alternative to PrusaSlicer on Linux/ARM64 2 weeks ago:
Orca Slicer is open source and as far as I know a fork of Prusa Slicer. I suspect that you can compile from source with whichever version of OpenGL you want … if any.
Disclaimer: I’ve only just started looking at it for a different use-case, but it seems like it will do what I’m suggesting.
- Comment on Do you actually audit open source projects you download? 4 weeks ago:
With?
- Comment on Do you actually audit open source projects you download? 4 weeks ago:
I run projects inside Docker on a VM away from important data. It allows me to test and restrict access to specific things of my choosing.
It works well for me.
- Comment on Why do people care so much that their friend or family member’s partner is attractive and not just loving? 4 weeks ago:
Oh … you’re a dick … thanks for self identifying.
- Comment on Why do people care so much that their friend or family member’s partner is attractive and not just loving? 4 weeks ago:
- I’ve been here for almost six decades.
- I don’t know what the topic of “procreation genetics” means outside this thread where I was attempting to answer OP’s question and put those two words in sequence to explain myself.
- I think that life has an imperative to procreate and has done so since it started.
- Life, as we currently know it, appears to revolve around genetics.
- I’m not sure what you’re talking about.
- Comment on Why do people care so much that their friend or family member’s partner is attractive and not just loving? 4 weeks ago:
I’m guessing that being gay doesn’t turn off the part that’s looking for a beautiful mate.
- Comment on Why do people care so much that their friend or family member’s partner is attractive and not just loving? 4 weeks ago:
I’m pretty sure that it boils down to successful procreation genetics. As in, the more attractive you are the bigger the selection of mates you have access to. It’s been happening for as long as life has existed here.
No doubt this has across history been heavily distorted by culture, art and religion and in more recent times by fashion, marketing, advertising and media.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
Is it for Clickbait purposes?
- Comment on Sweet pic 1 month ago:
Further down the article it talks about why it’s that colour.
- Comment on Sweet pic 1 month ago:
What’s even more remarkable is that someone actually did that, in January 1998.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
About that.
Just because I’ve done it this way and haven’t had issues, doesn’t mean it’s the best or only way.
You dared to ask a question and the tools to explore answers are readily available.
This is how we as a society make progress.
Please don’t feel like my experience is the final answer to your question … my experience tells me that this is rarely … if ever … the case.
So … please … explore!
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
If you genuinely attempting to quantify this, you can create a swap file of any size right there on your drive. You could iterate and test every setting for every scenario. You could even change settings dynamically if you wanted to.
That said, I leave it to the kernel to figure out and over the past 25 or so years that’s been fine.
- Comment on With bots hammering websites it might make companies make there websites smaller in in size to reduce bandwidth costs 1 month ago:
Or you just block them.
I will note that in my experience the bot army from META is by far the most aggressive and destructive. At one point, traffic from their systems was tenfold all the others combined.
- Comment on Would you rather have a pet dinosaur or a pet dragon? 1 month ago:
Hmm … I confess that I really appreciate and enjoy the company of the neighbours all around me … although there is one … let me work on that …
- Comment on Would you rather have a pet dinosaur or a pet dragon? 1 month ago:
Very cute … I don’t even have space for the little rodent, let alone a distant cousin ten times its size.
- Comment on Would you rather have a pet dinosaur or a pet dragon? 1 month ago:
I’m guessing that you’d need a big backyard for either … so I’m out.
- Comment on Fediverse Corporate Sabotage 1 month ago:
I’m guessing in the same way as Bit Torrent and others before it … with big flaming headlines, politicians foaming at the mouth, lawyers rubbing their hands with glee and the world for the general public becoming a little bit more shit whilst the actual miscreants carry on with impunity on some other platform or get funded by venture capitalists who make everything legal but no less palatable.
Source: I’ve been here for a while.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
I’m not familiar with how many telephones in Spain are landlines, but looking at Australia, where I am, the majority of connections don’t have an SLA battery, made even more power dependent because we have been rolling out fibre optic cable everywhere and the copper wire in the ground has been disconnected, preventing telephone exchanges from powering much of anything anymore.
The idea that generators will keep the essentials running is incomplete if not outright incorrect. Most of these systems have never been actually tested with an actual outage, look at Heathrow airport for a recent example.
At best a generator will run for up to 12 hours, and only if you have multiple generators and the fuel to run them will you have much in the way of energy security.
Of course if you’re already running on a generator then the picture is different, but even then, in the case of a country wide power outage, getting fuel for longer periods of time is going to be a challenge.
- Comment on Does humanism lead to tolerance paradox? 1 month ago:
Do you mean this: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
The paradox of tolerance is a philosophical concept suggesting that if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance; thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
Off the top of my head in no particular order:
- sewerage pumps
- fresh water pumps
- telecommunications systems
- refrigeration equipment in homes, restaurants, hotels, factories
- transport infrastructure like street lights, traffic lights, railway crossing lights
- trains, consider for example control of signalling and switching, let alone electric trains
- fuel distribution like petrol pumps
- hospitals
- broadcasting like TV and radio
Essentially society as we know it stops, at least for a while. Generators are used, but are often of limited use, since getting fuel to them is non-trivial and many are scaled for short outages.
Without knowing what happened in Spain, I can say that events like this can and do happen around the world. It’s likely that this will increase.
Given how interconnected the electricity grid is, I’m surprised that this didn’t cascade across Europe.
- Comment on What would this list look like for your generation? 2 months ago:
I get the sense that this list is constantly growing and acts as an incentive to invent new words that end up on the list.
By that measure, Emma is a rockstar and Darius is being bullied by their classmates and the teacher.
- Comment on Squint your eyes 👀 2 months ago:
So, what prompted this?