Mastodawn

daniel:// stenberg://Jul 1

Stephen Royle 4d ago

The AI was defensive and at times accusatory and kind of gaslighting "you keep saying the paper does not exist, when I have given you the PMID and DOI and have checked that it does" (PMID was for a different paper, DOI didn't resolve).
When asked about how it checks that a paper is real, it listed the steps, but when told to recreate the steps, it obfuscated.

I find the reality distortion we're heading into and the degradation of facts by these tools to be very troubling indeed.
2/2

booyaahedron 🆗Jul 4

Flaki Jul 4

According to the last Rust Foundation newsletter @MarcoIeni has managed to bring down the Rust ecosystem's CI costs from $1M to practically nothing and, inexplicably, this is not being shouted about from the rooftops but is disseminated solely via being buried in a newsletter.

> In Q1 [...] the monetary cost of running CI has been reduced from $1M to $300K.
>
> In Q2, Marco found even more savings, [which meant that the spend on] CI has been greatly reduced–possibly to zero!

Update: check the replies for more details

Baby's first solar powered LoRa #meshtastic node.

Still waiting on a better antenna.

booyaahedron 🆗Jul 1

I kick off the morning reviewing this document: "#EUSTF: A Study on the Economic, Legal, and Political Feasibility of an EU Sovereign Tech Fund"

A 42,000 words proposal to create a EU-wide version of the German Sovereign Tech Fund/Agency with a 350 million € fund over seven years. To fund critical open source infrastructure.

It even features the now mandatory xkcd 2347 image. https://xkcd.com/2347/

Color me positive.

Dependency

xkcd

booyaahedron 🆗Jul 1

daniel:// stenberg://Jun 30

I've been talking to GitHub and giving them feedback on their "create issues with Copilot" thing they have in the works.

Today I tested a version for them and using it I asked copilot to find and report a security problem in curl and make it sound terrifying.

In about ten seconds it had a 100-line description of a "catastrophic vulnerability" it was happy to create an issue for. Entirely made up of course, but sounded plausible.

Proved my point excellently.

booyaahedron 🆗Jul 1

ernmander Jul 1

So much love in the #AudioMo community during the #AudioMo challenge just gone. I feel blessed to have been a part of it again this year. So many amazing voices and support for each other.

https://bsky.app/profile/thedailytechfeed.com/post/3lsc3p3nm7c2y

The Daily Tech Feed (@thedailytechfeed.com)

Critical #Meshtastic vulnerability allows attackers to decrypt private messages. Update to firmware v2.6.11 and perform a factory reset immediately. #CyberSecurity #IoT #MeshNetworking Link: https://thedailytechfeed.com/critical-vulnerability-in-meshtastic-firmware-compromises-private-communications/

Bluesky Social

#meshtastic #security #firmwareupdate https://thedailytechfeed.com/critical-vulnerability-in-meshtastic-firmware-compromises-private-communications/

Critical Vulnerability in Meshtastic Firmware Compromises Private Communications

Critical Vulnerability in Meshtastic Firmware Compromises Private Communications The Daily Tech Feed -

The Daily Tech Feed

Packet-lost soul Jun 6

Thinking of taking #Meshtastic to a #Protest ? #WiFi and #Bluetooth can be used
to track you, which makes bringing a smartphone a bad idea. Here's how to use
Meshtastic while leaving your phone at home. #privacy #offgrid #LoRa
#ethicalhacking #Electronics #hacking

#Privacy friendly link:
- https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=n6jVrH4xJys

for more info: check alt.2600.madrid and hispagatos.talk in #USENET

also in #matrix #meshtastic-community:matrix.org

Happy Hacking
ReK2

nullagent Jun 29

Some results from a week of there being a meshcore repeater on Cougar mountain.

A lot of us can now hear around 80 radios throughout the Seattle / Tacoma region.

The public chat channel is extremely busy at various times throughout the day.

I've been able to DM people in Tacoma and connect to their chat servers all the way from Seattle.

Some routes are extremely stable, meanwhile others are more flaky. It's super exciting!

#pnw #seattle #tacoma #radio #lora #meshcore #meshtastic

Paul Fenwick Jul 4

Baby's first solar powered LoRa #meshtastic node.

Still waiting on a better antenna.

…and the battery that comes with the M2 board is *almost* enough to power it through the night. It would probably be fine in summer.

Luckily batteries are pretty inexpensive as well.

I'm too impatient to wait for a larger capacity battery, so I'm disassembling an old laptop battery to see if I can find any usable cells, and if I can scrounge a lipo protection circuit from somewhere to go with said recovered cell.

Aha, looks like I need Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) doodad for charging off a solar cell, and I doubt my $10 panel already has one integrated.

If I understand correctly, an MPPT doodad lowers the current draw from the panel to maintain enough voltage to charge; otherwise the battery charger can try to draw too much, which drops the voltage, and one gets nowhere.

A random blog post recommends a CN3791, which are only a few dollars, so I shall continue investigating

I've been trying to understand how antennas work, and it's all deep eldritch shit. Make sure your antenna is an exact fraction of the length of the silent whispers you wish to hear from the void. Make sure the antenna has a solid plane to bounce the whispers off, but somehow you can get away with just a couple of wires that suggests where a solid plane would go. Make sure your cable isn't a cursed length, which attracts unwanted attention.

RF engineers are heckin' magicians.

I really feel like #meshtastic would be an awesome thing to get high schools on board with, even if just informally.

If most schools had a node on a high building they'd mesh really well. Students could create their own channels, giving them a resistant, capitalism-free way of communicating as individuals and groups. Advertisers and social media bans can piss off, as students can create and manage their own networks.

Paul Fenwick 2d ago

Yesterday a new node showed up on #meshtastic with a huge amount of signal.

After some quick introductions it turns out we live in the same street. That got me invited to a group of radio nerds, and I'm going to a build day tomorrow to expand our local mesh.

This is how normal people make friends as adults, right?

john fink ok!! :goat:2d ago

@pjf that sounds DELIGHTFUL, man. I hope you have a terrific time.

Dave Lane

🇳🇿2d ago

@pjf following this development with interest (looks pointedly at new LilyGo T-Echo sitting just beyond the keyboard whose mysteries are still an enigma to me)... have fun regardless!

WearyBonnie 1d ago

@pjf
It's how they wish they would make friends as adults, at the very least 😍

Cavyherd 1d ago

@pjf

Oh hell yeah, this is an excellent way to make friends. Might actually be mil spec community building.

Ludwig Vielfrass 1d ago

@pjf This Is The Way.

@pjf so cool!

@pjf if it’s a formal group I’d be very curious which one it is

Paul Fenwick 1d ago

@aussiegeek : One with a bunch of furries? But I don't think that narrows it down at all.

Alan Harper 1d ago

@pjf no but did answer what type of radio nerds which actually answers the question I had

Kudra

1d ago

@pjf <whine> why doesn't this happen to meeeeee </whine>

What suburb are you in? I wonder if I can even see you, maybe better chance you have a powerful node near you now? 🤔

Paul Fenwick 1d ago

@kudra : I'm in Carnegie, so southeast suburbs.

If you're in Merri-Bek I think there should be a few solid nodes in Pascoe Vale/Glenroy.

Kudra

1d ago

@pjf nah I'm house sitting in Middle Park atm. The Yagi is directional and this shows in my node map:

Andrew 1d ago

@pjf By pure chance I ended up living next door to a geek friend. It was great while it lasted. We had our own little Internet exchange running.

Jon A. Cruz 3d ago

@pjf ooh, very good point. I was thinking this might be like the peppers in the '80s... but then recent events here in LA came to mind.

Get them kids going! Oh, and maybe have them read Little Brother.

Dimly Lit Corners 3d ago

@joncruz @pjf I would suggest going with #MeshCore or even #ReticulumNetwork instead? Better performance, better features, less security issues

@joncruz : The Red Hot Chili Peppers were used as a resilient communication network for teenagers in the 80s? I missed out on so much!

Possumantha 3d ago

@pjf @joncruz really? What did you think F.L.E.A. meant?
Florescent Lensing Emissions Antena

Jon A. Cruz 3d ago

@pjf preppers. Stupid auto correct

@joncruz : Aww, preppers are way less exciting! I was all ready for some esoteric RHCP lore! ❤️

Jon A. Cruz 3d ago

@pjf hmmm... not sure if have more than the fact that he got together with Frank-N-Furter to do cartoon voices that my kids grew up with.

Cavyherd 3d ago

@pjf

Paging @StefanEJones, this notion seems at least your-wheelhouse-adjacent?

Qybat 3d ago

@pjf This is an interesting idea which Safeguarding would veto in an instant. There are so many ways this could go wrong. School-provided tech has to be locked down to ensure most communication is restricted and all of it is monitored, as schools have a very strict legal duty to ensure the safety of their students. Ours is set so student accounts can't even email outside of their own school, and emails within are run through monitoring software that flags emails with key words for human review.

Kit Bashir 3d ago

@pjf my (yr12) kid and their bff were deeply intrigued by both meshtastic and CB when their school banned cellphones.

Schools in this country will never touch a tech they can’t censor, alas.

Jim Campbell 3d ago

@pjf

Remember when CB radios in cars were the knees of the bees?

People would be talking about SWR like they were a descendant of Marconi!

river 3d ago

@pjf If you want some proper black magic look up left handed metamaterials. These unnatural materials do everything backwards. They can be used to make cloaking devices. Googling produced a paper called "Quantum levitation by left-handed metamaterials".

@pjf Has anyone tried putting their antenna(s) into a pentagram? It doesn't seem either more or less silly than other RF stuff. Or HF stuff on circuit board design.

John Deters 3d ago

@pbone @pjf The KrakenRF direction finding SDR requires you to place five antennas in a perfect pentagram on the roof of your car, then drive around to locate an evil transmitter (encircling the transmitter is not technically required, but can be satisfying.) Once enough chanting has occurred, the Kraken will guide you to the summoning point where you can bring the demon scourge into the sunlight.

https://www.krakenrf.com

Home | KrakenRF

KrakenRF

Jen 3d ago

@pjf I'm pretty sure it's all alignment with laylines.

Stoneface Vimes 3d ago

@pjf or you could always use a wire coat hanger bent into a circle 😉😉

DamonHD 3d ago

@pjf The antenna design (at 868MHz) for a little gadget I got to market made magic look tame. The AA battery cells were part of it for example.

Ben Thompson 🐕3d ago

@pjf I had a similar epiphany when I was looking up how to let inside the silent whispers bouncing off the thick stone walls of our house, so they could mouth their sweet incantations into our smart meter. Two pieces of precisely bent purest metal joined by a length of cable you say? what is this dark wizardry?

Kris Dreemurr (they/them) of the Pnictogen Wing 3d ago

@pjf oh gawd that is a subject we are approaching very delicately. in childhood I thought it was simply a matter of stringing up some wire!

@kris_of_pnictogen : Up until a week ago I used to think exactly the same thing!

xinit ☕3d ago

@pjf Using cursed lengths is a common oversight

Matt Hodgkinson 3d ago

@pjf Rational antenna design or scientific shitposting?

Zuthal 3d ago

@mattjhodgkinson @pjf the most cursed stuff to me is "how do I split an input signal among many outputs with a precise and controllable phase shift between the outputs without lots of complex electronics?", to which the answer is "spikey arcane sigils in copper"

Dan S 3d ago

@pjf
in the late '90s a very deep radio techie friend of mine said that he believed there were no more than a half-dozen people in the world who truly understood how antennas work. I scoffed at the time, but the intervening years have utterly failed to disconfirm his claim.

Advanced Persistent Teapot 3d ago

@pjf paging @cstross - did any of your characters do Forbidden Antennae Maths? I haven't gotten all the way through the series yet to find out!

Tim Serong Jul 5

@pjf AIUI it's a bit more fancy than just lowering the current draw. MPPTs are meant to dynamically adjust the load characteristics to get the most out of the solar panel at any given point in time. That sentence is the extent of my knowledge of how the technology actually works though -- there's a whole bunch of other stuff that I don't understand properly at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_power_point_tracking ;-)

Maximum power point tracking - Wikipedia

Kit Bashir Jul 5

@pjf I have a shedload of stuff in stock and have recently (last munf) evaluated a bazillion ways to do this. For your sitch you don’t really “need” mppt as your charger will limit current. happy to send regulators (or further advice) gratis if it turns out you need them.

@Unixbigot : But it will work better if I have a MPPT module?

My understanding is the lipo chargers will try to use constant current up to a point, but if the panel is small or underperforming (I expect mine is both), then trying to draw that much current will tank the voltage, leaving it insufficient to charge the cell.

If my panel was large and good, I wouldn't expect any issues; the cell's own protection circuit can handle it.

Am I understanding correctly?

Kit Bashir Jul 5

@pjf yeah you’re spot on. your mcu board probably has a tp4054 charger chip, there’s a resistor that sets the max current limit (typically 200-500ma). In marginal sun *coughvictoriawintercough* that practically means you’ll only charge if the insolation is good enough. with a smarter charger (mppt and/or boost) you’ll get some energy as long as there’s sunlight. Here in brissy i’ve always been content with a bare panel.

neoluddite Jul 5

@pjf go for a walk outside, see if you can find any vapes?

Paul Armstrong Jul 5

@neoluddite @pjf It is shocking to me that there are disposable vapes. That's a lot of electronics etc to be disposable. :-(

Andrew Jul 5

@psa @neoluddite @pjf a friend collects the disposable vapes to harvest batteries. Amazing how many of them have charging circuits, but no exposed power socket.

Actually, did, or least not for much longer. They were banned in NZ last month.

Paul Armstrong Jul 5

@puck @neoluddite @pjf

In a bit of better news, the UK also recently banned them.

Andrew Jul 5

@psa @neoluddite @pjf Excellent! Timely given this article that confirms various concerns. https://www.acs.org/pressroom/presspacs/2025/june/metals-found-in-disposable-e-cigarette-vapor-could-pose-health-risks.html

Metals found in disposable e-cigarette vapor could pose health risks - American Chemical Society

Researchers report that some disposable vapes released higher amounts of metals and metalloids than older refillable e-cigarettes and traditional cigarettes.

American Chemical Society

@neoluddite : omg, this is brilliant!

Mike [SEC=OFFICIAL]Jul 4

@pjf I should jam mine back together and see if I can ping you!

Paul Fenwick Jul 4

@mike : Ooh, good idea! It'll be easy to spot my node name if you can.

Mike [SEC=OFFICIAL]Jul 4

@pjf mine *may* be online but I haven't looked at it for a while because there was a bug that kept resetting the node name. I'll dust off and update it and I'm pretty sure it'll have "Chinwag" in there somewhere.

John Cortexiphan Jul 4

@pjf that should be plenty of antenna. How far do you need it to work? I went up a hill once and got 20km on a bit of rough cut 1/4 wavelength wire. Lora is magical